# AI menu maker for cafés and restaurants: six options compared, with prompts that write the descriptions > Free ChatGPT writes the dish descriptions and a free Canva or Adobe Express plan turns them into a print-ready menu. Here is what each AI menu maker does, what it costs as of 6 October 2026, and three prompts you can paste into any chatbot today. - Author: Alex Riesenkampff (Super44) - Published: 2026-10-06 · Updated: 2026-10-06 - Canonical: https://super44.ai/blog/ai-menu-maker ## Key takeaways - Two free tools make a complete menu: ChatGPT writes the dish descriptions from your ingredient list, and Canva or Adobe Express lays them out and exports a print-ready PDF. Canva Free includes up to 20 AI uses a month, and Adobe Express Free needs no payment card. - The paid design plan with the clearest UK price is Adobe Express Premium at £9.98 a month including VAT, with 250 generative AI credits a month. MustHaveMenus, built only for restaurant menus, starts at US$24 a month billed annually. - Canva and Adobe Express publish no link to a till, so neither knows which dishes sell. Revenue and sales count per dish come from the till itself, and Super44 reads them from Square, SumUp, Lightspeed, Epos Now and other tills on its £19 Core plan. - AI adds plausible ingredients that are not on the plate. The Food Standards Agency says the allergen information you give guests "must be accurate" and calls that a legal requirement, so give the model every ingredient, sauces included, and check its output against the 14 allergens. ## At a glance 1. **ChatGPT** — best for A café or pub that rewrites its menu a few times a year and only needs the words, not a new subscription (https://chatgpt.com/pricing) 2. **Canva** — best for A café or bakery that wants a free template, writes its own copy and prints a PDF at the local print shop (https://www.canva.com/create/restaurant-menus/) 3. **Adobe Express** — best for A restaurant that wants a clear sterling price, brand kits and AI images for its menus and social posts on one plan (https://www.adobe.com/uk/express/create/menu) 4. **Square** — best for A café or restaurant already taking payments on Square that wants descriptions on its till and online menu without another tool (https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/8335-create-and-edit-items) 5. **Super44** — best for An independent venue with a connected till that wants the menu built around what sells and drawn from its own product photos (https://super44.ai/en-gb) 6. **MustHaveMenus** — best for A restaurant group running Toast or Square that wants matching dine-in, takeaway and table-tent menus from one menu-only designer (https://www.musthavemenus.com/feature/menu-maker.html) An AI menu maker does two jobs, and most venues do best splitting them. Free ChatGPT writes the dish descriptions from the ingredients you give it, and a free Canva or Adobe Express plan turns that text into a print-ready PDF. **For a café, pub or restaurant that changes its menu a few times a year, those free plans cover the whole job; you pay when you want more AI uses, premium templates or a menu built around your own sales.** Paid design plans start at £9.98 a month for Adobe Express Premium on monthly billing, or £100 a year for Canva Pro. What a design tool does not know is which dishes deserve the space. That needs revenue and sales count per dish from your till, so the last three entries are as much about the data behind a menu as the look of it. And whichever tool writes the words, the allergen information on the menu stays your legal responsibility. ## Who publishes this, and what connects us to it Super44 publishes this page and is one of the six entries. Nobody pays to be listed. Super44 reads sales data from Square and other tills for its own analysis, so a Square venue can use both, which is worth knowing before you read what we say about Square. Prices are as each vendor published them on 6 October 2026. **Six AI menu makers for a single UK venue** | Tool | Writes the descriptions | Designs the menu | What you get | Uses your sales | Price, 6 October 2026 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ChatGPT | Yes, from what you paste in | Can draw a menu image; limited on Free | Text or an image | Only an export you paste in | Free; Plus £20 a month | | Canva | Magic Write, counted against 20 AI uses a month on Free | Templates, plus AI design generation | Print-ready PDF | Not published | Free; Pro £100 a year or £13 a month | | Adobe Express | Text you supply | Thousands of menu templates, AI images | PDF, PNG or JPEG | Not published | Free; Premium £9.98 a month incl. VAT | | Square | Generate button in the item library | Item records, not a printed layout | Descriptions on your till and online channels | Your sales sit in the same account | Free plan £0, plus 1.75% per in-person payment | | Super44 | Yes, in chat | Menu images from your saved product photos | Image up to 4K; no A4 page shape | Revenue and sales count per dish from your till | Free with 25 images a month; Core £19 with the till | | MustHaveMenus | Item form; AI Spell Check on Pro | 16,000+ restaurant templates | High-resolution PDF or ordered prints | Toast and Square item sync on Pro | US$24 a month, billed annually | *Prices as published on each vendor's page on 6 October 2026. Canva's and ChatGPT's UK pages do not say whether VAT is included. MustHaveMenus prices in US dollars only.* ## Three prompts that write your menu in any chatbot The quickest AI menu maker is a good prompt in a free chatbot. Each prompt below works in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini: fill in the brackets, paste it in, and check what comes back. Our [ChatGPT prompts guide for restaurants](/blog/ki-prompts-gastronomie) has more for reviews, reports and rotas. The first writes dish descriptions from your ingredient list and drafts the allergen line at the same time. **Dish descriptions from your ingredients** ```text You write menu copy for an independent [café / pub / restaurant / bakery] in [town]. Here are my dishes, one per line, as: name | price | every ingredient, including what goes into sauces, dressings, breads and garnishes. [paste your list] For each dish, write: 1. A menu name of no more than five words. 2. A description of 12 to 20 words that names the main ingredients and how the dish is cooked. 3. A line starting "Contains:" listing which of the 14 allergens appear in my ingredients: celery, cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, tree nuts, peanuts, sesame, soya, sulphur dioxide and sulphites. Name the specific cereal or nut, for example "nuts (almond)". Rules: - Use only the ingredients I listed. Do not add garnishes, origins, "homemade", "local" or anything else I did not state. - If an ingredient could hide an allergen (a sauce, pesto, stock, dressing or bought-in bread), write "CHECK:" and that ingredient instead of guessing. - Keep my prices exactly as written. - British spelling. No "delicious", "mouth-watering" or "perfectly". Return a table with the columns: Name | Description | Contains | Check | Price. ``` The second rewrites the whole menu in one voice for your kind of venue. If you paste a sales export from your till, it uses it to suggest what to feature, but leaves the call to you, because it does not know your food costs. **Rewrite the whole menu for your venue** ```text You are helping the owner of a [venue type, e.g. "neighbourhood café open 8am to 3pm" or "village pub with a Sunday roast"] rewrite the whole menu. Most guests are [who they are]. Current menu, exactly as printed: [paste menu] Optional: sales for the last [4] weeks from my till, as item | quantity sold | revenue: [paste export, or delete this section] Do this: 1. Group the items into no more than [5] sections, in the order a guest orders. 2. Rewrite every name and description in one voice: [e.g. "warm and plain, no foodie jargon"]. Maximum 15 words per description. 3. Flag duplicates, any section with more than [7] items, and any ingredient used by only one dish. 4. If I gave you sales, list the five best and five worst sellers by revenue and ask me which to feature. Do not decide from sales alone. 5. Put the items I choose to feature first or last in their section. 6. Do not change any price, ingredient or allergen. List every change you made at the end. Return the finished menu as plain text with section headings in capitals and the price after each name, ready to paste into a Canva or Adobe Express template. ``` The third turns the finished text into a design brief, for a chatbot that makes images or for the AI design tools in Canva and Adobe Express. **Menu design brief** ```text Design a [A4 portrait / square Instagram / A3 window] menu for [venue name], a [venue type] in [town]. Use exactly this text, word for word, and nothing else: [paste the finished menu] Style: [e.g. "cream background, dark brown text, one serif font for headings, lots of white space"]. Logo: [describe it, or "no logo"]. Photos: [only the photos I attach, or "no photos"]. Keep prices in line with each dish name, not in a separate column. Do not invent dishes, prices, slogans, opening hours or awards. If the text will not fit at a readable size, tell me which section to cut instead of shrinking the type. ``` **Check every allergen line against your own recipe records before anything is printed, because the Food Standards Agency states that the allergen information given to guests "must be accurate. This is a legal requirement".** A model only knows the ingredients you typed, and it fills gaps with plausible ones. The FSA's best practice guidance recommends written information covering all 14 allergens, in a format like "Chicken Tikka Masala (Contains: milk, nuts (almond))". Once the words are right, our guide to [menu engineering beyond the matrix](/blog/menu-engineering-applied) covers what the evidence says about names, placement and photos. ## ChatGPT The free option, and for most of the job the right one. ChatGPT is a general AI assistant that turns a list of ingredients into a page of menu copy in seconds, rewrites a tired menu in one consistent voice, and translates it for tourists. The free plan includes "Limited image creation", so it can also draw a menu as a picture. What it does well is the writing. It takes your rules in plain English ("no 'homemade', British spelling, 15 words max") and gives you three versions to choose from. Paste in a sales export and it will sort your best and worst sellers too, which the second prompt above relies on. Who should not rely on it: anyone who wants a finished print file from one place, or a menu that updates itself. It has no menu templates, and the free plan caps uploads at three files a day. Image creation renders text, and a misspelt dish or a wrong price on a printed menu is your problem, so treat a ChatGPT menu image as a draft and set the final text in a design tool. It knows nothing about what sells unless you export it from your till each time. Cost: free. Go is £7 a month, Plus £20 with "More complex and accurate image creation", and Pro from £89. Claude and Gemini do the same writing job, and our [shortlist of AI tools for restaurant owners](/blog/best-ai-tools-restaurant-owners) compares the general assistants with each other. ## Canva The design tool most owners already have a login for. Canva's free menu maker has templates for coffee shop, bakery, bar and cocktail menus, among others, and it saves "a print-ready PDF file" for the print shop. Magic Write, its AI text tool, is marked free on the menu page. What it does well is turning text into a good-looking page quickly. Paste the output of the prompts above into a template, swap the photos for your own, and download. On Pro, Magic Write and Translate stop counting against the monthly allowance, and resizing and background removal are added, which helps a venue that wants the same menu as an A4 page, an Instagram square and a board. Who should not pick the free plan for heavy AI use: Free allows "Up to 20 uses of Standard AI tools, OR Premium AI tools" a month, resetting on the first, and even Magic Write counts against it. Generating a whole design with Canva AI is a Premium tool, and conversational design with Canva AI 2.0 is an Ultra tool that Free does not include. Canva does not publish a link to any till, so it never knows which dishes sell. Cost: free for templates and the PDF. Pro is £100 a year for one person, or £13 a month on monthly billing, as of 6 October 2026, and lists "10x more AI than Canva Free". The UK pricing page does not say whether VAT is included. ## Adobe Express Adobe's design app, with thousands of menu templates and the clearest UK pricing on this list. Free costs £0 including VAT and needs no payment card. Premium is £9.98 a month including VAT, billed monthly with no annual commitment, after a 30-day free trial. What it does well is giving a small venue professional design tools at a known price. Premium includes 250 generative AI credits a month for images and other generated content, brand kits for your colours, fonts and logo, and more than 30,000 Adobe Fonts. It generates QR codes and exports menus as PDF, PNG or JPEG, so one design can go to the printer, the website and Instagram. Adobe says its generative AI features are "designed to be commercially safe". Who should not pick it: an owner who wants the descriptions written for them. Adobe's own menu page leaves the copy to you, advising you to "add descriptions that will entice customers", so pair it with the first prompt above. The standard menu size it suggests is 8.5 by 11 inches, a US letter page, so set a custom A4 size before you design. Cost: free, or £9.98 a month including VAT for Premium. Adobe Firefly Pro, at £19.99 a month, adds 4,000 credits a month for AI video, which a menu does not need. ## Square The tool you may already pay for. If your till is Square, its item library has a Generate button in the description field that writes a description "using generative AI" from keywords you give it, with a choice of length and tone. What it does well is putting the description where the item already lives. The same item record feeds your point of sale and, once assigned, your website and delivery apps, so you write a description once instead of in three places. There is no new login, and menu management is included on Square for Restaurants' free plan. Square's own instruction is the right one: "Review generated content for quality and accuracy." Who should not pick it: a venue that is not on Square, or one that needs a printed menu. Square's help centre covers item descriptions, and a laminated dine-in menu still comes from Canva, Adobe Express or a printer. The generator also writes from the keywords you type rather than from your sales, even though those sales sit in the same account. Use Square's sales reports, or a tool that reads them, to decide what goes on the menu. Cost: Square for Restaurants Free is £0 a month plus 1.75% per in-person card payment. Plus, with course management and live sales reporting, is £69 a month per location. ## Super44 Our entry. Super44 is an AI assistant for independent venues that connects to your till. It writes menu descriptions in chat, and it creates and edits menu designs, posters and social images from the product photos you have saved with it. What it does well is grounding the menu in what sells. With your till connected, it reports revenue and sales count per dish for the period you ask about, so you can choose what to feature before anything is designed. It works with Square, SumUp, Lightspeed, Epos Now and other tills. Designs use your own photos and saved logo, and with your Google connection on Core it can post the finished menu to your Google Business Profile. Who should not pick it: a venue that wants an A4 menu to send to the printer. Super44 makes images in square, 4:5 portrait, 9:16, 16:9 and banner shapes up to 4K, not an A4 page or an editable layout, so Canva or Adobe Express suits a printed dinner menu better. Check every word and price on a generated image before using it. Without a connected till it has no sales to work from, and ChatGPT with an export does that part free. Cost: the free Starter plan needs no card and includes 25 generated images a month on a registered account. Core, at £19 a month including VAT, adds the till connection and 100 images a month. ## MustHaveMenus A US platform built only for restaurant menus, with "over 16,000 professionally-designed restaurant templates" and what it calls an "AI-enhanced" menu maker. What it does well is keeping a whole set of menus consistent. Items go into a saved library you reuse across dine-in, takeaway and table-tent designs, and QR codes stay the same when you edit the menu, so nothing needs reprinting. You can download high-resolution files or order prints. The Pro plan adds Toast and Square integrations, multi-location management and AI Spell Check, which suits a small group keeping several sites in step. Who should not pick it: a single UK café. Prices are in US dollars only, the Design plan is billed annually, and customer service runs 8am to 4pm Pacific time on weekdays, which is late afternoon to midnight in the UK. The till integrations it lists are Toast and Square, so a SumUp or Epos Now venue gains nothing there. Cost: Design is US$24 a month billed annually, which is US$288 paid upfront. Pro is US$50 a month per location, billed annually, which is US$600 per location paid upfront. There is no contract or cancellation fee. ### Try Super44 Super44 connects to your POS and shows you where your money leaks, then tells you what to do about it. [Open Super44](https://super44.ai) [Or start now, it's free](https://app.super44.ai/?entry=blog_post_get_started) ## So which one If you change your menu a few times a year, do not buy anything. Use the first two prompts in free ChatGPT, paste the result into a free Canva or Adobe Express template, and check the allergen lines against your recipes. That is a complete AI menu maker for £0. If you design often and want one clear UK price, Adobe Express Premium at £9.98 a month is the straightforward pick. If you already run Canva for social posts, stay there and keep the AI-heavy work in ChatGPT so the 20 free uses go further. If you run several sites on Toast or Square and want every menu to match, MustHaveMenus is built for that, in dollars. If your question is which dishes deserve the space, no design tool answers it. Start with our [menu pricing calculator](/blog/menu-pricing-calculator), which turns food cost and weekly sales into a contribution per dish. Super44 is the option here that reads those sales from your till and draws the menu from your own photos. For the other jobs AI can take off an independent venue's hands, see our guide to [AI for hospitality](/blog/ai-for-hospitality). ## FAQ ### Is there a free AI menu generator? Yes, several. ChatGPT Free writes descriptions and has limited image creation. Canva Free has menu templates, a print-ready PDF download and up to 20 AI uses a month. Adobe Express Free has thousands of menu templates and needs no payment card. Super44's free Starter plan includes 25 generated images a month once you register. ### Can ChatGPT make a menu for my restaurant? It writes the menu well and can draw one as an image, with image creation limited on the free plan. Give it every ingredient and your exact prices, then check each word and price, because image models can render text wrongly. For a print file, paste the finished text into a Canva or Adobe Express template and export a PDF. ### Will an AI menu maker get my allergens right? Not reliably on its own. A model only knows the ingredients you type, and it may add a garnish or a "nutty" note that is not on the plate. The FSA says the allergen information you give guests must be accurate, and recommends written information covering all 14 allergens, so keep your recipe records as the source and check every "Contains" line against them. ### Can AI design a menu from my own food photos? Yes. Canva, Adobe Express and MustHaveMenus let you upload your photos into a template. Super44 composes menu images from the product photos you have saved with it and your saved logo, in square, portrait and landscape formats up to 4K, though not in an A4 page shape. ### How do I decide which dishes go on the menu? With sales and cost per dish, which no design tool has. Our menu pricing calculator turns your food cost and weekly sales into a contribution per dish. If your till is connected to Super44, it reports revenue and sales count per dish for the period you ask about. ## Sources 1. [ChatGPT pricing (UK)](https://chatgpt.com/pricing) — UK prices: Free £0, Go £7, Plus £20 and Pro from £89 a month. Free: "Limited messages with uploads" and "Limited image creation"; Plus: "More complex and accurate image creation". The page does not say whether VAT is included. Checked 6 October 2026. 2. [OpenAI Help Center: File uploads FAQ](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8555545-file-uploads-faq) — "Free users are limited to 3 file uploads per day." Checked 6 October 2026. 3. [Canva pricing (UK)](https://www.canva.com/en_gb/pricing/) — UK prices: Free £0; Pro £100 a year for one person on yearly billing or £13 a month on monthly billing; Business £180 a year per person. Free: "Up to 20 Standard or Premium AI uses". Pro: "10x more AI than Canva Free", "AI tools (resize, translate, remove background, and more)". The page does not say whether VAT is included. Checked 6 October 2026. 4. [Canva Help Centre: Understanding your AI usage](https://www.canva.com/en_gb/help/ai-access/) — Free: "Up to 20 uses of Standard AI tools, OR Premium AI tools. No access to Ultra AI tools". On Free, Standard AI tools such as Magic Write draw from the monthly allowance, which resets "at 12:00 a.m. UTC on the first of each month". Pro: up to 200 Premium uses. "Conversational design with Canva AI 2.0" is an Ultra AI tool. Checked 6 October 2026. 5. [Canva free menu maker](https://www.canva.com/create/restaurant-menus/) — Magic Write marked FREE, Translate marked PRO. "save your design as a print-ready PDF file". Template categories include coffee shop, bakery, bar and cocktail menus. Checked 6 October 2026. 6. [Adobe Express pricing (UK)](https://www.adobe.com/uk/express/pricing) — Free "£0.00 incl. VAT", "No payment card required". Premium "£9.98/mo incl. VAT", "250 generative credits per month per user", "No annual commitment, billed monthly", 30-day free trial. Lists "Generate QR Code" and export "in JPEG, PNG, PDF, GIF, PPT". Checked 6 October 2026. 7. [Adobe Express menu maker (UK)](https://www.adobe.com/uk/express/create/menu) — "Browse through thousands of standout menu templates". Advises "add descriptions that will entice customers" and "don't forget to proofread your item titles, descriptions, and pricing". Standard size given as 8.5" x 11", with custom sizes. Checked 6 October 2026. 8. [Square Support Centre (UK): Create and edit items](https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/8335-create-and-edit-items) — "You can click Generate in the Description field to have a description automatically written using generative AI." Provide "Keywords and choose a Length and Tone". "Review generated content for quality and accuracy." Checked 6 October 2026. 9. [Square for Restaurants pricing (UK)](https://squareup.com/gb/en/point-of-sale/restaurants/pricing) — Free £0 a month plus processing fees; Plus £69 a month per location; in-person processing 1.75%; menu management included on Free. Checked 6 October 2026. 10. [MustHaveMenus menu maker](https://www.musthavemenus.com/feature/menu-maker.html) — "AI-enhanced restaurant menu maker", "over 16,000 professionally-designed restaurant templates", editable QR codes, matching menu sets, saved item library, high-resolution download or printing. Checked 6 October 2026. 11. [MustHaveMenus pricing](https://www.musthavemenus.com/menu/pricing.do) — Design "$24/mo paid annually"; Pro "$50/mo per location, paid annually" with "Toast and Square integrations" and "AI Spell Check". Customer service "8am - 4pm Pacific, Monday through Friday". No contract or cancellation fee. Checked 6 October 2026. 12. [Food Standards Agency: Allergen information for non-prepacked foods, best practice](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/allergen-information-for-non-prepacked-foods-best-practice/allergen-information-for-non-prepacked-foods-best-practice) — Published 24 February 2025. "The allergen information provided to consumers must be accurate. This is a legal requirement". Lists the 14 allergens; recommends written information covering all 14; example format "Chicken Tikka Masala (Contains: milk, nuts (almond))". Checked 6 October 2026. 13. [Super44 pricing (UK)](https://super44.ai/en-gb) — Starter free, "No credit card required"; Core £19 a month with "Live POS integration"; Plus £49 a month. "Prices include applicable tax." Checked 6 October 2026.