For restaurants, cafés and pubs
Sell the dish before they’ve sat down.
When someone on Bucketdish logs one of your dishes with a photo, the picture goes on your menu, with what they thought of it and the dish’s score out of 10. Claim your restaurant to get the menu right, answer what’s said and see which dishes people love.
Free while we’re in early access, with no card details. No commission and no fee per diner, now or later. Rankings are never for sale. Already claimed yours? Sign in
People pick the dish first, then the place.
Before they come, people look you up, and what they look for is the food. Here’s what independent research says about how diners choose. None of it is about Bucketdish: it’s why we built it.
- 7 in 10adults in Britain check the menu online before they eat out. YouGov, 2022 [1]
- 49%When people in the UK research a restaurant on social media, close-ups of the food are what they look for most: 49% said so, against 29% for the décor. Barclaycard survey, 2023 [2]
- 3 yearsThe photos diners posted predicted which of 17,719 restaurants would still be open up to three years later. Reviews predicted one year. Photos of the food mattered most, and most of all for independents. Zhang & Luo, Management Science, 2023, US [3]
- 19 pointsAn extra half-star on a review site made restaurants 19 percentage points more likely to sell out of tables at peak times. Anderson & Magruder, Economic Journal, 2012, US [4]
These studies are about photos and ratings on other platforms. They aren’t Bucketdish results, and we’ll publish ours only when we have enough to be sure.
Your menu, with pictures. You don’t have to take them.
When a diner logs a dish with a photo, that dish gets a picture on your menu, along with what diners said about it and its score out of 10. Your menu fills in dish by dish.
- Add your own photos any time. They’re labelled “From the restaurant”, and your cover and gallery come first on your page.
- A diner’s photo is never swapped out or edited, and only joins your gallery, with their name on it, if they say yes.
- Insights shows how much of your menu has a picture, so you know which dishes still need one.
In menu experiments, a photo made people more willing to order a plainly named dish, and to pay more for it. Hou, Yang & Sun, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 2017 [5]
No cut of the bill. No fee per diner. No half-price nights.
Most ways of finding new diners charge you for each one, or ask you to give food away. Bucketdish does neither, and that’s a promise: we’ll never take a cut of your bill or charge you per diner.
- 15–35%of every order: the commission restaurants told Which? delivery apps were taking. Which?, 2021, UK [6]
- Per dinerBooking networks charge for each diner they send you, on top of a monthly plan.
- DiscountsDeal apps want money off the bill. Businesses that ran daily deals saw their review ratings fall afterwards. Byers, Mitzenmacher & Zervas, 2012, US [7]
- Per clickSearch ads charge every time someone taps, and stop working the day you stop paying.
- £0Bucketdish: no commission, no fee per diner, no discount. Free while we’re in early access, and rankings are never for sale.
If we add a paid plan, it’ll be a flat monthly price for extra reports and tools, and you’ll hear about it at least 90 days before anything’s charged.
See which dishes earn their place.
A star rating judges the whole restaurant. Bites judge one plate at a time, so Insights can show you what people love, what’s slipping and what they’re saving for next time, each with the number of Bites behind it.
- Most loved and Needs attention, dish by dish, with what diners said.
- Bucket-list saves: the people who’ve saved a dish to try.
- Book and Order taps from your page, and how much of your menu has a picture.
- No percentage from fewer than 5 Bites, so one bad night doesn’t look like a trend.
Diners tell you what’s wrong. Fix it in one tap.
When diners pay a different price, look for a dish you’ve dropped or find the wrong hours, it lands on your To do list with the likely fix on one button. One tap sets the price and tells the diners who flagged it. Right all along? “Price is right” says you’ve checked.
Built for the middle of service.
The portal is built to a click budget. Automated tests walk every job below on a phone and on a laptop, count the clicks, and fail if one goes over. Typing doesn’t count as a click.
- 1 clickFix a price diners flagged
- 2 clicksReply to a Bite
- 3 clicksMark a dish sold out today
- 4 clicksClaim your restaurant, from search to verifying
Answer in public, right where the next diner reads it.
Answer any Bite as the restaurant, once, right under it. Honest Bites stay up, and so does your answer. Only the diner can delete a Bite; moderators remove the ones that break the rules.
- Filter to the Bites still waiting for a reply, or the ones that didn’t land.
- Something breaks the rules (abuse, spam, a fake, the wrong restaurant, someone’s personal details)? Report it with a reason. Our moderators decide, and you see the outcome under Reported by you.
- A Bite that didn’t enjoy the dish isn’t a reason to report, but it is worth a reply.
When hotels started replying to reviews, their ratings rose by 0.12 stars and they got 12% more reviews. Proserpio & Zervas, Marketing Science, 2017; a study of hotels [8] Replies can draw more critical reviews too, so answer the ones that matter, calmly. Chevalier, Dover & Mayzlin, Marketing Science, 2018 [9]
Win Dish of the week. Nobody can buy it.
Each week and each month, our editors pick a dish in each town or city from the ones diners there rate best, and diners see it at the top of Explore. Picks happen whether or not you’ve claimed. Claim, and the pick lands on your To do list with a kit to share it: posts, a poster, a badge for your website and captions.
- Insights shows how the dish did against the days before the pick, so you can see for yourself.
- A poster for your tables, with a QR code that opens your page, so the people eating there can log what they had.
- The same rules for every restaurant, claimed or not.
How we pick Dish of the week
The same way for Dish of the month, and for every restaurant, whether it’s claimed or not.
Bites first
Each week (Monday to Sunday) and each month, we shortlist the dishes in each town or city that at least 2 different people logged.
Quality, not volume
Ranked by rating, pulled towards the local average while a dish has few Bites, so one lucky score can’t win. Loved dishes move up, and smaller places get a small lift, so a busy restaurant can’t drown out a small, good one.
A person picks
A Bucketdish editor chooses from the shortlist and writes the one-line reason diners see.
Never for sale
Nobody can pay for a pick, and claiming a restaurant doesn’t change its chances. Replies and a restaurant’s own photos don’t count towards it.
Careful with your menu.
Your menu, your photos and your reputation go through the portal, so it’s careful with all three.
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Uploads are checked, then rebuilt.
Files are checked by what’s inside them, not their names. Photos and PDF pages are redrawn as fresh images, dropping hidden extras and location data. Originals are never shown, and are deleted within 30 days.
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Nothing goes live without your OK.
AI only ever makes a draft, removals are never ticked for you, and every live edit has an Undo. No fake urgency, no dark patterns.
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No paid rankings.
Money doesn’t move anyone up the map or a list, or buy a Dish of the week, and replies and official photos never change a score. How we pick
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Checked owners, anonymous diners.
We verify you with the contact details already listed for your place, never ones typed in by whoever’s claiming. You see what diners reported, never who they are.
Asked by restaurants.
Something else? Send us a message, or read all the questions.
I run a restaurant. Can I claim my spot?
Yes. Claim your restaurant in our restaurant portal: search for your place, check the details, make an account and prove it’s yours. Then get your menu right, see what diners say about each dish, and reply to Bites. It’s free while we’re in early access.
It’s early days, so a few things aren’t switched on yet: email (for now, our team confirms new accounts by hand), Google sign-in, and verifying by phone or postcard. The restaurants page has the full list.
Soon, some menus will also be read from restaurants’ own websites by our menu bot. Its page explains what it fetches and how to opt out.
Do I have to use AI to add my menu?
No. You can type your menu in, dish by dish. If you let AI read it, it only makes a draft: you see every line next to where it came from, and nothing goes live until you publish.
What happens to the files I upload?
They go into private storage. We check each file by what’s inside it, redraw images and PDF pages as fresh images (dropping hidden extras and location data), and never show your original to anyone. Originals are deleted a week after you publish or discard the menu, and after 30 days at the most.
Claim yours in four clicks.
From search to verifying, it’s four clicks; typing doesn’t count. It’s built into Bucketdish: on your phone you land on your restaurant, and on the laptop in the office it’s a full website. Free while we’re in early access, with no card details and nothing to cancel.
- Find your place by name and town, check the details and make an account.
- Prove it’s yours: add a short tag to your website, or ask us, and our team checks by hand with the phone number and website we already hold.
- Snap your menu or chalkboard, drop in a file or paste a link. AI makes a draft, you tick every line, and nothing goes live until you publish.
- Put the poster on your tables, and answer what diners say from your To do list.
Not ready yet? Look yourself up first: see what diners have posted about you, and what’s missing.
What works today
- Sign up and claim your restaurant
- Verify with a tag on your website, or ask us to check by hand
- Your menu from a photo, PDF, Word file, spreadsheet or link, read by AI and checked by you
- The To do list, with one-tap fixes for what diners flag
- Replies to Bites, your own photos and your opening hours
- More than one site, with every site’s To do in one list
- Team invites, as a link you copy and send
- Insights: the dishes diners love and the ones that need work, Bucket-list saves and Book and Order taps
- Dish of the week and month, with a kit to share it
- A QR poster for your tables
Not switched on yet
- Email, so no codes or notifications: our team confirms new accounts by hand for now
- Google sign-in, and bringing your details in from Google
- Verifying by phone or postcard
Where the figures come from.
These studies are about photos, ratings and replies on other platforms and in other people’s restaurants. They aren’t Bucketdish results.
- YouGov daily survey of 5,000 adults in Great Britain, 1 December 2022. Survey.
- Barclaycard Payments, OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults and 200 restaurant owners, June 2023. Survey.
- Zhang & Luo, Management Science 69(1), 2023. 755,758 photos of 17,719 US restaurants, 2004–2015. Peer-reviewed study.
- Anderson & Magruder, Economic Journal 122(563), 2012. Restaurant ratings and reservations in San Francisco. Peer-reviewed study.
- Hou, Yang & Sun, International Journal of Hospitality Management 60, 2017. Menu experiments. Peer-reviewed study.
- Which?, the costs of food delivery, as reported by restaurants, 17 June 2021, UK. Consumer research.
- Byers, Mitzenmacher & Zervas, ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, 2012. Daily deals and review ratings, US. Peer-reviewed study.
- Proserpio & Zervas, Marketing Science 36(5), 2017. Hotels’ replies to reviews. Peer-reviewed study.
- Chevalier, Dover & Mayzlin, Marketing Science 37(5), 2018. Managers’ replies and later reviews. Peer-reviewed study.