From menu to compliance, in seconds — not weeks.

MenuRegistry accepts menus in three formats: PDF, photo or image (JPEG, PNG, WebP), or pasted text. Most operators use the PDF or paste-text path. If your menu exists as a designed PDF, from Canva, Adobe, your POS, or a print shop , upload it directly. If you manage menu content in a Google Doc or similar tool, paste the text.

Image uploads go through optical character recognition before analysis. This works well for clean, printed menus photographed in good light. Handwritten specials boards, very dense multi-column PDFs with heavy graphic layering, and menus where item descriptions are embedded inside images may take longer or require a second pass. If an upload produces unexpected results, the paste-text path is always the most reliable.

Privacy note: Uploaded files are stored encrypted at rest on US-East infrastructure and are automatically deleted 90 days after upload. We do not share your menu data with third parties for any purpose other than running the audit. See our security page for the full breakdown.

Once your menu is uploaded, our automated analysis engine reads each item name and description, identifies the dish, and infers likely ingredients from the text. It then cross-references every dish against the 9 FDA major allergens , milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, as well as the disclosure requirements under California's ADDE Act.

For each dish, the audit assigns a risk level (HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW) based on how clearly the allergen presence or absence can be determined from the available description. A dish labeled “Caesar salad” with no further description will produce different confidence levels than one that says “romaine, anchovy Caesar dressing, shaved Parmesan, croutons”, because the latter gives the engine more to work with. The audit tells you exactly where the ambiguity is.

Yes, we use automated language analysis to read your menu. See our Disclaimer for what that means and, critically, what it does not mean. The audit is informational. It is not a guarantee of legal compliance and it is not a substitute for review by a qualified compliance professional or registered dietitian.

Every completed audit produces a per-dish allergen matrix showing the presence or absence of all 9 major allergens for every item on your menu. Items with ambiguous or missing disclosures are flagged at HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW risk so you can prioritize what needs attention first. Pro audits ship as a timestamped audit PDF with a SHA-256 hash of the input menu and an ISO timestamp printed in the footer. Re-running the same menu produces the same hash, so the document is verifiable, the kind of paper trail a regulator or plaintiff's attorney would expect.

The Pro audit log retains a complete version history, so if you update your menu and re-run the audit, you can produce a side-by-side comparison showing exactly what changed, when, and what the allergen disclosures were at each point in time. That paper trail is what turns a consumer complaint from an open-ended exposure into a defensible record.

What the audit is good for: internal review before attorney sign-off, identifying gaps before a regulator request, and establishing a documented compliance posture under California's ADDE Act and federal FALCPA requirements. What it is not: a certification of compliance, a substitute for a qualified compliance attorney, or a registered dietitian review of your recipes. You remain solely responsible for the accuracy of your menu content. Read our Disclaimer before relying on any audit output for compliance purposes.

Uploaded menu files are retained for 90 days and then deleted from our file storage. Your audit results and the per-dish matrix are retained in your account until you delete them or close your account, that persistence is what makes the audit log useful as an internal record of work performed.

We do not sell or share your menu data with third parties. Our analysis processor is contractually prohibited from training any model on customer data. Your recipes stay yours. The full list of data processors and their terms is on our security page.

For a complete breakdown of what we collect, where it lives, and how long we keep it, see our security and data page.