xMenu:
The Smart,
Real-Time Menu That Cares

Role:

Founder • CPO • Product Designer • CTO

Year:

2023

Industry:

Hospitality — Restaurant Chains & Hotel Groups

Business Model:

B2B2C

Tech Stack Highlights:

Design & Collaboration 

Figma, Adobe XD/CC, Miro, Jira, MS Teams

Frontend

Vue.js, HTML5, CSS3

Backend / APIs

PHP (Laravel), SQL

AI & ML

Google Cloud Vision AI, GCP STT/TTS, Vertex AI for LLM Orchestration

DevOps & Infrastructure

AWS, CMS, FDA Nutrition API, POS integrations

The Problem

Imagine sitting down at a restaurant. You’re handed a menu—maybe printed, maybe digital—but it’s exactly the same for everyone in the room.

It doesn’t care that you’re allergic to shellfish.
It doesn’t know you’re on a low-carb diet.
It doesn’t understand you’re craving something light because it’s 95°F outside.
It just… sits there. Static. Generic. Impersonal.

If you have questions, your only real option is to call over a server, who then disappears into the kitchen to double-check. Sometimes they come back unsure. Sometimes they offer a guess. And in the worst case—like if the aioli has raw egg or the pesto contains hidden pine nuts—you’re one wrong order away from a trip to urgent care.

That’s not just inconvenient. It’s broken.

Now multiply that scenario across every table, every day, in thousands of restaurants in the U.S.—with real consequences:

  • Guests feel invisible. Nearly 79% of diners want menu recommendations tailored to their preferences and context—but fewer than 12% ever get them Restaurant Dive+1Toast POS+1.

  • Decision overwhelm paralyzes. Menus bloated with endless choices lead guests to default to the familiar—reducing the chance of trying new, higher-margin items Mental Floss.

  • Waste and lost revenue add up. The hospitality industry discards nearly 5.8 million tons of food per year, much due to misaligned menus and inventory gaps wsj.com.

  • Older tech costs serious money. Cloud-based POS systems are now used by 71% of restaurants, yet many still rely on outdated software—leading to inefficiencies, training issues, and avoidable mistakes Restaurant Dive.

Static menus don’t just frustrate guests—they erode trust, waste resources, damage the guest experience, and limit revenue.

The Target
Audience

The pain of static, outdated menus doesn’t just frustrate guests—it puts daily pressure on the people running restaurants.

That’s why xMenu was designed for two connected audiences:

Internal Users – The Hospitality Teams

These are the people inside the business who deal with the fallout of a non-dynamic menu every single day:

  • Restaurant Owners & Operators
     Managing multiple locations or franchises with no easy way to update menus across the board.
  • General Managers
     Trying to coordinate menus, pricing, and inventory between lunch, dinner, weekends, and events—without a centralized system.
  • Chefs & Kitchen Staff
     Who know exactly when ingredients run out, but have no real-time control over what’s shown to guests.
  • Marketing Teams
     Stuck using static menus that don’t support promotions, upsells, or seasonal offers.
  • Front-of-House Staff

Who have to play “go-between” when guests ask about ingredients, allergens, or wait times.

Every guest walks in with personal needs, tastes, and expectations.

  • Someone on a keto diet.
  • A parent ordering for a child with peanut allergies.
  • A traveler looking for vegetarian options in a new city.
  • A returning customer who wants “the usual” and expects the system to remember.

For these users, a static menu feels disconnected. xMenu gives them a smart, tailored experience without needing to explain themselves every time.

xMenu is built on a B2B2C model. Here’s what that means in practice:

  • We sell to the restaurant or hospitality brand (Business to Business)
     They get the dashboard, smart menu tools, control panel, and integration.
  • Their customers (Business to Consumer) interact with the product directly
     through personalized digital menus, ordering flows, and loyalty features—without ever needing to know xMenu exists.

It’s a silent upgrade for the guest and a powerful tool for the business.

The Solution

Menus That Think

xMenu doesn’t just fix menus — it reinvents them.

Where static menus ignore context, xMenu listens. It personalizes every dining experience in real time by adapting to the guest, the kitchen, and the moment.

Here’s how:

For the Guest :
  • Knows their needs: Adapts based on allergies, diets, preferences, even moods — all stored securely and automatically applied.
  • Responds to context: Updates in real time based on weather, time of day, location, and special events (like brunch, holidays, or wine pairings).
  • Connects to the kitchen: Removes items that can’t be made due to inventory — no guesswork, no apologies.
  • Respects their health: Pulls live nutritional info via FDA APIs — even for fully customized orders.
  • Empowers interaction: Guests can message or call their server directly from the menu, share notes, and even view chef or server profiles — all from the app.
  • Feels like magic: When it’s 95°F, lighter dishes rise to the top. On rainy days, soups take center stage. And if you’re allergic to shellfish? Dishes with shrimp or scallops don’t even show up — because xMenu knows better.

xMenu was designed with one thing in mind: make the menu work harder — for you.

Whether you’re managing a single location or a hospitality group with dozens of venues, xMenu gives you centralized control and real-time flexibility without the usual tech headaches.

Here’s what it unlocks:

  • Centralize everything: Manage all your menus — for dine-in, room service, poolside, kiosk, delivery — from a single dashboard. No more juggling PDFs, printouts, or disconnected platforms.

  • Create menus by context: Set up unique menus by room, floor, zone, or time of day. Want a limited brunch menu in the rooftop bar and a full menu in the main dining room? Done in minutes.

  • Dynamic sales optimization: Boost revenue by tying your menu to real-world variables. Rain in the forecast? Suggest warm soups. Big game tonight? Promote shareables. Run out of truffle oil? Instantly 86 truffle fries across all menus.

  • Deep personalization for guests: Let guests see a version of the menu that speaks to them — their allergies, their preferences, even their mood. What they see is what they want.

  • Faster flow for your staff: Servers and chefs save time. Guests ask fewer clarification questions. Managers spend less time updating menus. And when things change (and they always do), updates take seconds — not hours.

  • Better guest experience = stronger brand: Guests feel understood. Staff feel empowered. And your restaurant runs smoother, smarter, and more profitably.

xMenu is more than a digital menu —
 it’s an intelligent layer between your guest’s desires and your kitchen’s reality.

Design + Tech

Human-Centered Strategy

xMenu wasn’t just designed — it was discovered, shaped by deep research and real conversations across the hospitality industry.

Over 80 interviews with restaurant managers — from fast-casual to fine dining — and more than 200 guest discovery calls revealed a consistent truth:
 people want menus that understand them.

That insight became our north star.

From Research to Reality

We didn’t assume. We listened.
 We ran user discovery not only for xMenu but also during the HubOrder project, where we studied how guests decide what to eat — and what frustrates them.

The result? A platform that builds the menu around the guest, not the other way around.

I designed xMenu to personalize itself before a guest even opens the menu.

  • If a guest has a profile (even from previous visits), the menu knows their dietary needs, preferences, mood, and even past reviews.
  • If they don’t, xMenu can initiate a brief AI conversation — either text-based or voice — to ask smart, contextual questions in under 15 seconds.
  • Based on that, the menu reshapes itself in real time. The layout, highlighted dishes, modifiers — even dish descriptions — adjust to that person.

 

This meant the menu wasn’t just dynamic — it was relational.

We built comprehensive food profiles for every item on the menu:

  • Ingredient lists linked to FDA nutrition and allergy databases.
  • Prep times, chef’s notes, historical or origin stories.
  • Dynamic calorie and nutrient calculation even after customization.

Guests can ask questions, get answers, and leave a review for each individual dish.
 For the first time, restaurants gain feedback at the dish level, not just at the table level — a game-changer for menu iteration.

To keep the dining experience warm and personal, we built server and chef profiles into the guest-facing app:

  • Guests see who’s serving or cooking for them — photos, bios, languages spoken.
  • Servers can respond to chats, get notified of special requests, and stay connected throughout the meal.
  • Chefs can tell the story of their specials, highlight ingredients, and flag prep delays instantly.

This bridges the human gap often widened by tech.

  • Backend: PHP + SQL hosted on AWS, architected for speed and flexible menu logic.
  • Dynamic CMS Engine: Built for multi-brand, multi-location control — permission-based, real-time, and low-latency.
  • Integrations: Future-proof APIs for POS systems (Toast, Square), delivery partners, and payment gateways (Stripe, low-fee fintech for restaurants).
  • Dual-view UX: Server-side app optimized for speed, guest-side app optimized for personalization.
  • Gamification & Loyalty: Guests earn points for feedback, customized offers, and engagement — driving return visits and deeper data.

I didn’t just want to design a digital menu.
 I wanted to build a smarter, more human way to eat out — one that adapts to real people in real moments.

As Founder, System Designer, UX Lead, and CTO, I:

  • Researched kitchen and guest behavior.
  • Designed and tested ingredient logic and user flows.
  • Led a team of 6 engineers and DevOps.
  • Built MVP, deployed real restaurant pilots.
  • Crafted internal training content and marketing assets.

This was strategic leadership by product — I didn’t delegate vision; I built it with my team.

  • Work across formats: Designing one system for luxury dining, fast-casual, and bars was complex.
  • Inventory syncing: Real-time updates require tight integration and discipline.
  • Adoption & Resistance: Many properties feared change—and integration.
  • Lesson: Guests and teams prefer control that feels natural—not forced.
     For next phase, we envision linking xMenu with xBrain, enabling AI-driven menu suggestions based on conversation and guest history.

In a pilot with an Italian restaurant group:

  • Menus updated 3× faster during peak service.
  • 18% reduction in guest wait times.
  • 22% increase in upsells (chef’s recommendations always visible).
  • Zero manual menu updates—dynamic content across all locations.
  • Guests with allergies reported 100% satisfaction improvements.

 

xMenu earned backing from Techstars + Ecolab (2023) for its role in food safety and personalization.

What I’d Do Differently, and Why xMenu Still Matters

Looking back, xMenu was ambitious — and necessarily so.

We weren’t trying to digitize menus. We were trying to reimagine how restaurants communicate, serve, and personalize experiences at scale — using design, system logic, and real-world empathy.

 

What I Learned

  1. Personalization is messy — and worth it.
     Guests don’t want a “smart” menu. They want their menu — one that knows them, supports them, and surprises them. But delivering that level of nuance requires deep data architecture, tight UX flows, and careful handling of preferences, privacy, and intent.
  2. Restaurants don’t need more tools — they need fewer, smarter ones.
     xMenu taught me how fragmented hospitality tech is. Menus, loyalty programs, inventory, websites, CRM — all siloed. Our challenge was to unify them without overwhelming staff. That forced us to design for clarity, speed, and trust.
  3. Tech can bring people closer — if it stays in the background.
     The best features weren’t flashy. They were the quiet ones:
    • Letting a server share their name and photo before arriving at the table.
    • Helping a chef disable an item with a single tap.
    • Giving a guest confidence that the pesto is pine-nut free without asking twice.

Those moments felt small, but they added up to something deeply human.

 

What I’d Improve

If I were to start today:

  • I’d lean even harder into voice-based interaction — guests telling the system what they want instead of tapping through filters.
  • I’d also embed more learning loops — menus that adapt over time based on user behavior, not just inputs.
  • And I’d push to integrate with kitchen operations more deeply, using real-time inventory and prep data to guide both chefs and guests.

What’s Next

xMenu was never meant to stop at menus.

We’re already laying the groundwork to connect it with xBrain, enabling:

  • AI-assisted guest conversations before the meal.
  • Predictive menu curation.
  • Real-time feedback that doesn’t just report, but teaches.

In a way, xMenu taught me that great products don’t just solve pain points — they spark possibility.

And that’s what I’ll keep building toward.

Visual Demo

xBlock Product

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xBrain

AI External Brain

HubOrder

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