Restaurants in Kuwait: the four moments before an order

Somebody in Hawalli picks up a phone and looks for somewhere to eat. Being in that list is one thing. Getting the order is four things, and the last three are entirely inside your control.

This article walks through those four moments in order, names what breaks at each one, and says which of them software can fix and which need a person with an afternoon free.

The market you are being found inside

Two figures set the scene. Mordor Intelligence reports that independent outlets accounted for 70.35% of the Kuwait foodservice market size in 2025, and that dine-in transactions accounted for 51.10% of activity in the same year.

Read that twice, because both halves matter. Most places competing with you are owner run, not head office run, so nobody has an advantage you cannot match with attention. And about half the activity is still people sitting down, so this is not only a delivery question.

Moment one: found

Somebody sees your name. On a map, in a message from a friend, on a sign in Jabriya.

The failure here is spelling. A restaurant called Al Diwan on the sign, Al-Diwan on the map listing, Diwan Restaurant on Instagram and something else again in Arabic is four restaurants as far as a search is concerned. Pick one written form in English and one in Arabic and use exactly those everywhere, including the licence.

The second failure is the area. People search by neighbourhood, so Salmiya, Hawalli, Jabriya, Fahaheel and Kuwait City should appear in your own description of yourself, in the words a customer would use.

Moment two: is it open

This is the one that quietly costs the most, because the customer never contacts you to complain about it.

Google's own guidance is to provide your regular customer facing hours of operation, and to specify special hours for particular days such as holidays or special events. Two Kuwait specifics follow from that.

Your week is not the week the software assumes. Friday and Saturday are the weekend here, so your busy evenings and your quiet ones are not where an imported template puts them.

And your special hours change more than most markets. Ramadan alone rewrites the trading day. Set those as special hours rather than leaving customers to guess.

The same is true on your own ordering page. If it takes orders after the kitchen closes, someone will be phoned back and apologised to, and that customer remembers the apology rather than the food.

Moment three: what do you sell, and what does it cost

Now they want the menu. This is where a lot of restaurants in Kuwait lose people who were ready to spend.

The common failure is a photograph of a printed menu, or a PDF that opens as a page the reader has to pinch and drag around. It was made for A4 and it is being read on a phone in a car.

The second failure is a price that is no longer true. If the printed menu is from last year and the real price is higher, the customer finds out at the door, which is the worst possible moment.

A menu that works here is one page of readable text, current prices, and clear options with their own prices, so a large with extra cheese shows what a large with extra cheese costs before anybody commits. Menu qr code covers getting one onto a table, and qr restaurant covers what has to sit behind the square.

Moment four: how do I order

They have decided. Now make the last step obvious and short.

One menu link that leads to a page that takes the order. Not a phone number that rings out at nine, not a form that emails somebody, not a message thread where a member of staff types the order back to the customer for confirmation.

If ordering means a conversation, you are paying a person to do what a page could do, and the customer is waiting during every message of it.

"The thing that surprised me most when we started visiting kitchens here was how many of them were already found. People knew the name, people knew the food. They were losing customers at the menu and at the order, which are the two cheapest things in the whole business to fix." — Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

What Get Menu covers of the four

Nothing at moment one. We are not a directory and we do not bring you customers. That work is yours, and no software should claim otherwise.

Moments two, three and four are what the product is.

Your menu sits on your own address on getmenu.ae, included in every plan, with 12 page layouts and a photo style you set once, built to read on a phone rather than on paper. Item names and descriptions can be written in Arabic as well as English.

Opening hours are enforced, so the page stops taking orders when you stop cooking. Options and add-ons carry their own prices and can be made required. Counts per item fall as orders come in and the dish greys itself out at zero. Every line is priced again from your live menu at checkout, so the number on the screen is the number at the door.

For the half of the market that sits down, a code is generated for every table with a designer so the printed card suits the room, and a group at one table can order from several phones onto one bill.

When an order is placed, 3 messages go out: a confirmation to the customer, a ticket to your team's WhatsApp group, and for a delivery, a rider link carrying the map pin dropped at checkout with the building and flat picked from a list. Every message is logged with whether it arrived.

The people who found you once are then worth keeping. Stamps, tiers your regulars grow into, and a card in Google Wallet that updates itself with no app to install, with Apple Wallet built and waiting on a certificate. Names and numbers stay yours, exported to a spreadsheet whenever you want, and old order details are cleared automatically after 120 days.

Month end brings invoices carrying your tax registration number as a PDF and a sales dashboard by day and item.

What it does not cover

There are no online payments. Cash or your own card machine at the door or the table, and no card details anywhere in the system.

There is no scheduled ordering, no pre-order and no collection order type.

We are not a delivery app and we have no drivers. If you need somebody else's riders, you still need somebody else. Online food delivery platforms sets out that side honestly.

And we are not a cash register at your counter.

A job worth one afternoon this week

Write your name once, in English and in Arabic, and make every place you appear match it exactly.

Set your real hours, including the special ones for Ramadan and public holidays.

Replace the picture of your menu with a page that opens as text on a phone, with prices you checked this month.

Put one ordering link in your profile and use it as your reply to every enquiry.

That is moments one to four closed, and only the third and fourth need any software at all. You get 15 days to try it without entering a card, and nothing is deducted from your sales.

Frequently asked questions

Will this get my restaurant into search results?

No. We are not a directory and we do not advertise you. What we give you is a page worth arriving at once somebody has found you.

Can the menu be in Arabic and English?

Yes. Item names and descriptions can be written in both, which matters in a country where residents come from many places.

Does the page stop taking orders when we close?

Yes. Your opening hours are enforced, so nobody orders at one in the morning and waits for food that is not coming.

How do customers pay?

Cash or your card machine at the door or the table. There are no online payments, so no card details are stored anywhere in the system.

Do we keep our customer list?

Yes. Names, numbers and order history belong to your restaurant and export to a spreadsheet whenever you want, including on your last day.