How to optimize your menu visibility on Talabat
A customer opened your Talabat page. Will they see the dishes that make you money? A practical guide to the menu itself, category by category.
There are two kinds of visibility on Talabat.
The first one is getting your restaurant into the list a customer scrolls. That depends on the signals the app reads: opening hours, preparation time, ratings, conversion. We explain them in How delivery apps decide who shows up first.
The second one starts after the tap. The customer is on your page. Will they find the dishes that make you money, or will they scroll, hesitate and leave?
This article is about the second one. It is the part you control completely, from the Talabat Vendor Portal, this week.
How a customer reads your Talabat menu
Watch someone order on their phone and you will see the same pattern every time.
They look at the first two or three categories. They scroll quickly through the rest. If they are looking for something precise, they type it into the search bar. And they stop on the dishes with a photo.
Everything below follows from that.
1. Put the dishes that make you money at the top
The first categories get most of the attention. Many menus waste them on "Starters" or on a long list of drinks.
Open your Talabat sales report and list your ten best sellers. Then mark the ones with a good margin. Those dishes belong in the first category, or the second one at most, whatever the kitchen calls them.
A simple order that works for most restaurants:
- Your best sellers, under a clear name like "Most ordered" or "Our signatures"
- Combos and sharing boxes
- Main dishes, by type
- Sides and extras
- Desserts
- Drinks
2. Fewer categories, named the way customers think
A menu with eighteen categories feels like work. Most restaurants can say everything in eight to twelve.
Name each category with words a customer understands at a glance. "Burgers" beats "From the grill". "Rice bowls" beats "Signature creations". If a category has one or two dishes, merge it into another one.
3. Check what is hidden right now
This is the most expensive mistake we find, and it is invisible from the kitchen.
On Talabat, a dish marked "unavailable until I turn it back on" does not appear greyed out. It disappears from your storefront completely. Someone sets it during a busy night when an ingredient runs out, and nobody turns it back on. Weeks later, one of your best dishes is still missing.
Open the Vendor Portal and list every dish that is currently unavailable. For each one, decide: bring it back today, or remove it from the menu for good.
Then make it a weekly habit. Five minutes, every Monday.
4. A photo on every dish, starting with the top of the menu
Customers stop on photos. A dish without one is easy to scroll past, even if it is your best seller.
You do not need fifty photos tomorrow. Start with the dishes in your first two categories, then work down the menu. Our checklist for photos that work at thumbnail size is in Menu photos that get the tap.
5. Names customers can find with the search bar
When a customer types "chicken biryani" or "halloumi", the search works with the words written on your menu. A dish called "The Maharaja" is hard to find. "Chicken Biryani, The Maharaja recipe" is easy.
Keep the brand name if you like it, and add the words a customer would actually type. We go further on this in Naming dishes so customers can find them.
6. Use option groups instead of copies
Many Talabat menus list the same dish three times: small, medium, large. Or one box per drink choice. The menu gets longer, and the customer scrolls past it all.
Talabat lets you set option groups: how many options a customer can pick in a group, and whether they can pick the same option more than once. One dish with a size choice is cleaner than three dishes. One family box with "choose 3 mains" is cleaner than six boxes.
Shorter menu, same choice, easier to read.
7. Make changes in the right place
Since 2026, Talabat takes menu changes through the Vendor Portal only, not by support ticket.
If your Talabat menu is connected to a POS or a tool like Foodics, Deliverect or GrubTech, make the change in that tool instead. Otherwise the next sync erases it. We explain why in Using Foodics, Deliverect or GrubTech? Edit your menu in the right place.
A one-hour pass you can run today
- List your ten best sellers and move the profitable ones to the first category.
- Count your categories. Merge the small ones until you have twelve or fewer.
- Rename every category a customer would not understand in one second.
- Open the list of unavailable dishes and decide for each one.
- Mark every dish without a photo, starting from the top of the menu.
- Rewrite the names of your five best sellers with the words customers type.
None of this costs anything. It changes what a hungry customer sees in the first five seconds on your page.
Where we come in
When we rebuild a Talabat storefront, we do this work on the whole menu: category order from your real sales, names and descriptions in English, a dish image on every item, and option groups set up properly. Then we check it every two weeks with you.
Want to know how your Talabat menu scores today? Send us the link. Your score out of 100 lands in your inbox in minutes, then we go through it with you, with no upfront investment.
Want this checked on your own storefront?
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