From PDF to digital weekly menu: how Restaurant Mela fully automated its menu updates
Upload the weekly menu, done: how Restaurant Mela at Senevita automates its digital menu and menu plan.
A new weekly menu every week: seven days, each with a daily menu and a veggie menu, plus soup and dessert. Anyone who maintains a restaurant menu plan knows what that means: the same dishes are typed into the ordering system, copied onto the website and transferred into the newsletter. At Mela, the restaurant in the Obstgarten in Affoltern am Albis run by Senevita AG, that is now a thing of the past: today the kitchen uploads a single document, and Jamatu’s automation does the rest.
One restaurant, several guest groups, one menu plan
Mela is both a restaurant and a community catering operation. Today, Senevita staff, apprentices with their own menu price, the team of the Sozialdienst Affoltern am Albis (social services) and outside guests all order their lunch via JamOrder, Jamatu’s ordering system: the digital menu opens in self-service via QR code or online for pickup. Each group has its own menu with its own fixed prices. Connecting the residents of the residence is already being planned.
Until recently, this meant that the kitchen’s weekly menu plan had to be transferred by hand into several systems. Up to 14 dishes a week with descriptions, veggie labels, soups and desserts: error-prone and time-consuming, week after week.
Step 1: upload instead of retyping, even as a PDF
Today, the restaurant team uploads the menu plan in a simple form, as an Excel file or directly as a PDF. The PDF is read by an AI: it recognises the date, dish, description, veggie option, soup and dessert and turns everything into structured data. A validation step checks the week for completeness and plausibility, then a preview shows all dishes with prices. One click on Approve, and that’s all it takes.
Step 2: the digital menu maintains itself
In the background, the automation creates the dishes in Jamatu’s back office, or recognises them when a classic makes a comeback. Each dish automatically lands in the right weekday category and gets its soup and dessert options, the veggie label and availability for the exact day: the Tuesday menu can only be ordered on Tuesday. The fixed prices per guest group are applied automatically, for staff catering as well as for apprentices, social services and the pickup offer.
Special case social services: order by 11 am, delivered for lunch
A special case shows how flexible time-based menus are: for the Sozialdienst Affoltern am Albis, Jamatu enables Senevita AG to run a dedicated lunch service from Mela. The social services staff choose their preferred menu in JamOrder between 9 and 11 am, the kitchen cooks to order and Senevita delivers the food to the office in time for lunch. This is made possible by freely configurable ordering windows per menu: the staff menu is open from 11 am to 1:30 pm, the social services menu from 9 to 11 am, each with its own dishes and its own prices. This turns a restaurant into a delivery service for corporate clients, without any additional admin.
Step 3: the website updates itself on Sunday evening
The website mela-restaurant.ch also stays up to date without anyone lifting a finger: every Sunday evening, the automation syncs the complete menu plan and the daily specials for the new week. The display then rotates on its own: every day at 2 pm the daily special switches to the next day, planned ahead for the whole week. Online, guests always see what is currently on in the kitchen.
Step 4: newsletter with menu highlights, automatically
Finally, the system sends the weekly newsletter in Mela’s design: the week’s menu highlights, Monday’s dish as the lead, one click to pre-order and collect. The mailing list comes straight from website sign-ups, and unsubscribing takes one click. Senevita’s restaurant team also receives a confirmation email with the published weekly menu.
The result: minutes instead of hours
What used to be scattered manual work across several systems is now one upload with preview and approval. No more copying errors between kitchen plan, ordering system, website and newsletter: one single source, consistent everywhere. Every week, the team gains time for what matters: the guests.
Are you still updating your weekly menu by hand? Whether restaurant, staff restaurant, chain catering or community catering, we’d be happy to show you how a digital ordering system with automated menu updates works in your business too. Get in touch.