Vegan, Gluten-Free, Halal: How Dietary Filters Turn Your Menu Into a Personalised Experience

"Is this gluten-free?" "Does this have nuts?" "Can you do the burger without the bun?" If you've ever worked a dinner service, you know exactly how often these questions come up. Your servers answer them patiently because your guests deserve clear answers — but every question is a minute that could have been spent on another table.

A well-built digital menu answers most of these questions before they're asked. Tag your dishes with dietary information once, and every guest can filter the menu down to just the dishes that fit their needs. Vegan? Here are your twelve options. Celiac? Here are the safe eight. Halal family with a nut allergy? We can show you exactly what works.

Try it in the live demo below. Tap any filter and watch the menu narrow in real time — stack filters to match exactly what a guest is looking for:

Tag Once, Help Every Guest

Setting up dietary tags in NEMENU takes a few minutes the first time. Open an item, click the tags field, and pick from a standard set:

• Vegetarian — no meat or fish
• Vegan — no animal products at all
• Gluten-free — safe for celiac and gluten-sensitive guests
• Dairy-free — no milk, butter, cheese, cream, or yogurt
• Nut-free — no peanuts or tree nuts
• Halal — prepared according to Islamic dietary law
• Kosher — prepared according to Jewish dietary law
• Spicy — mild, medium, or hot levels

You can also create custom tags — low-sodium, keto-friendly, pescatarian, chef's recommendation, signature dish. Whatever categories matter to your guests, you can define them once and apply them across the menu.

Filters That Actually Feel Good to Use

Tagging is just the backend. The magic happens when your guest opens the menu on their phone. At the top of the menu sits a clean strip of filter chips — one per tag you use. Tap any chip and the menu animates down to only the matching dishes.

Guests can stack filters. Vegan AND gluten-free? Tap both chips. Want halal, nut-free, and spicy? Stack all three. The menu narrows with every tap, so even a guest with four dietary requirements can find exactly what they can eat — without scrolling through dozens of dishes they can't.

Allergens: A Separate Story

Dietary tags and allergens look similar but serve different purposes. Dietary tags answer "can I eat this?" Allergens answer "will this hurt me?" NEMENU supports both.

Allergens use a separate, legally-grounded list — the 14 major allergens required by EU regulation, plus US FDA Top 9 — and display as small icons next to each dish. A guest tapping on "Chicken Caesar Salad" sees clearly: contains eggs, fish, gluten, dairy. That level of detail is a legal requirement in many countries, and NEMENU's allergen system is built to meet it.

Multi-Language Ready

Filters work in every language your menu is translated into. A Turkish guest opens your menu in Turkish and sees Turkish-labelled filters. A vegan traveller from Germany sees the same menu in German with the "vegan" chip translated automatically. Dietary accessibility and language accessibility go together — you can't offer one without the other if you're serious about international guests.

Smart Defaults for Different Restaurants

Not every restaurant needs every filter. A steakhouse probably doesn't need a vegan filter taking up prime screen real estate, and a vegan café doesn't need a "halal" chip that applies to every single dish. NEMENU lets you choose which filters appear on the guest-facing menu, keeping the UI clean and relevant.

• Steakhouse — spicy, gluten-free, nut-free (skip vegan)
• Vegan café — gluten-free, nut-free, raw (vegan is implicit)
• Hotel all-day dining — all filters enabled for maximum reach
• Coffee shop — dairy-free, vegan, gluten-free (the three that matter for drinks and pastries)

Analytics: Which Diets Are Visiting You?

NEMENU tracks which filters guests use most. Check the Analytics page and you'll see the breakdown: maybe 22% of guests are filtering for vegetarian, 8% for gluten-free, 4% for halal. This is a direct window into your guest base.

If 15% of your guests are filtering for a category where you only have two dishes, that's an opportunity. If nobody ever taps "dairy-free" despite it being on, maybe it's not worth the visual clutter. Filter data turns hunches into decisions.

Quick Setup Checklist

If you're setting up filters for the first time, here's the fastest path from zero to a fully tagged menu:

• Open the Menu page and enable the dietary tags feature in Settings
• Choose which tags are relevant to your restaurant
• Open each category and tag the obvious dishes first (all-vegetable dishes are probably vegan, fish is gluten-free, etc.)
• Use AI suggestions — NEMENU reads your ingredient lists and proposes tags for you to confirm
• Publish — filters appear on your live menu instantly

Getting Started

Dietary tags and filters are included on NEMENU's Pro plan and above. If you're already a NEMENU customer, open any menu item and the tags field is waiting for you. If you're new to NEMENU, you can create a digital menu for free and upgrade to Pro when you're ready to welcome every diet.

Every guest should be able to order confidently. Filters make that the default, not the exception.