Free tool · stays in your browser

See your menu the way a diner does.

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Paste a dish description, get six diagnostics — sensory adjectives, provenance signals, technique words, length, hedge words, pricing — each annotated with the research behind it. The Inspector teaches you what to look for. It does not rewrite for you.

How we keep your copy private · What is menu copy?

Live diagnostic — every keystroke updates the scorecard.
Type or paste a description above. Or click to see the diagnostics on a hand-picked example.
Pattern Explorer

The six patterns the Inspector watches for

Read these once and you'll start seeing them in your own menu. Read them ten times and you won't need this tool. Each card lists the actual lexicon the rules engine uses; everything is open-source in /tools/menu-copy/menu-copy.js.

What good looks like

Before & after — three real-shape rewrites

Same dish, same length, same vocabulary the cook uses every day. The difference: one or two more sensory words, the producer named, and the hedge cut. None of these are "writerly" — they're things the line cook can describe out loud.

House saladAdd 1 sensory word · cut hedges

Before

Our nice fresh delicious house salad — just simply our best.

After

Crunchy little gems with shaved breakfast radish, lemon, and a buttermilk dressing we make every morning.

Cut: nice / fresh / delicious / just / simply / our best (six hedges). Added: crunchy (sensory), little gems (variety), breakfast radish (specific produce), every morning (technique).

Roast chickenName the producer · name the technique

Before

Half a chicken with potatoes and seasonal vegetables.

After

Half a Path Valley chicken, brined overnight and roasted on the bone, with crisped fingerlings and pan jus.

Added: Path Valley (provenance — name the farm), brined overnight / roasted on the bone (technique), crisped / pan jus (sensory + technique). Same proteins, same vegetables, same plate cost.

Tonnarelli al pepeOne sensory swap

Before

Hand-rolled tonnarelli with pecorino and pepper.

After

Hand-rolled tonnarelli with smoky pecorino and cracked black pepper.

Two-word change. Smoky and cracked are both sensory; together they take a 7-word description from "fine" to "I want that." Read it out loud — the rhythm is the point.

These are pattern illustrations, not your menu. The Inspector never writes for you — it points at directions. The rewrite is yours, or your line cook's, or whoever knows what makes the dish sing.

Plain English

What this does, in four sentences

  1. You paste a description. One dish at a time, or a whole menu via a CSV/TSV. The text sits in your browser and never leaves it.
  2. You get six diagnostics. Sensory adjectives, provenance signals, technique words, length, hedge words, pricing presentation — each scored against research-backed targets and annotated inline so you see what fired.
  3. You get an action ladder, not a rewrite. The Inspector tells you which direction would help — "add 1 sensory word," "name the producer," "cut these hedges" — and explains why each move matters. By design, it never picks the words for you.
  4. You get four ways to take it with you. The Copy Card is a 1200×1500 PNG with annotations + scorecards designed for a non-technical reader. The CSV mirrors per-item scores. The JSON is structured for any downstream tool. The ZIP packages all four (PNG + CSV + JSON + README).

It is not a rewriter, a voice / tone analysis, or a substitute for menu engineering. More on the limits below.

Lead by example

Your menu copy stays in your browser.

The whole rules engine — the sensory lexicon, the technique list, the hedge blocklist — is bundled in /tools/menu-copy/menu-copy.js, a single dependency-free script you can read directly. No upload, no account, no localStorage writes. Open DevTools → Network and type into the box: the request list does not grow.

A nine-step verifiable privacy tour and a printable Copy Card land in a follow-up release. For the same posture today, see how Brand Suite protects your logo — this tool is built on the same architecture.

Honest framing

What this isn't

The Inspector is sharp, but it is one specific tool — designed to teach, not to write. Knowing what it isn't is what makes it durably useful.

Not a rewriter.

By design. By 2027 every chatbot will rewrite menu copy adequately; what no chatbot does well is teach a small-business owner to read their own copy critically. The Inspector tells you what's missing — it does not tell you which words to use to fix it. Ten quarterly runs over two years and you'll write better menus from scratch.

Not a voice / tone analysis.

A whole-menu voice profile ("you sound like a 2015 farm-to-table restaurant") is a separate, paid offering. The Inspector reads items, not systems. If your menu reads as “voice missing” across the board — low signal density throughout, generic words everywhere — that's a brand-voice problem, not a copy-polish problem.

Not a substitute for menu engineering.

Polished copy on a Dog is still a Dog. Run the Menu Engineering Matrix first to learn which items are worth the rewriting time. The Inspector is the how; the Matrix is the which.

Not a complete language model.

The lexicons are curated, not exhaustive. A sensory adjective the Inspector doesn't recognise (or a regional ingredient that should signal provenance) won't fire. The diagnostics are conservative on purpose — false negatives are easier to fix than false positives. v1 lexicon recognises English; full Spanish lexicon support is on the way.

What this is: a permanent skill upgrade you can run quarterly.

Three audiences, three handoffs. The Copy Card is the visual a non-technical reader can use — bring it to the chef before the next menu reprint. The CSV is for the accountant or operator running quarterly comparisons. The JSON is for a developer building anything on top of your menu data. The Inspector itself is the slow-cooked benefit: ten owners who run it once a quarter for two years write better menus from scratch than they did before.

When you want a brand-voice rewrite, hire the studio.

If the Inspector flags “Rewrite” across most of your menu, you don't have a copy problem — you have a voice problem. Brand-voice work is the studio's actual paid offering. Bring your Copy Card to the kickoff call.

See brand & menu voice