Online ordering for halal restaurants: halal on every dish, Ramadan ready

Online ordering for a halal restaurant should answer the customer's first question, "is this halal?", on every dish, and then let them order and pay without a phone call. With Menuthere, you switch on Halal for each dish that is, and customers see a Halal mark when they open it, along with allergens and calories. Orders come from your own link, pay into your own Stripe account, and carry no commission. In Ramadan the same link takes iftar pre-orders for a time slot and opens a late-night suhoor menu. The Free plan takes 50 orders a month; Lite, at $17 a month, adds unlimited orders, card payments and pre-orders.

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How halal shows on your menu

Open any dish, press Add allergens & nutrition and switch on Halal. The same card holds the 14 allergens and the calories. Here's what customers see.

Switch it on only for dishes that are halal. If your whole menu is halal, switch it on for every dish anyway: a customer opening one dish from a search or a shared link won't see your sign on the wall. If some dishes aren't (a supplier's pepperoni, a dessert with gelatin you haven't checked), leave them off and say so in the description.

The Halal mark is a label you set. Menuthere doesn't certify anything and doesn't check your supply chain. Customers trust the mark because they trust you, so back it the way the law expects.

What US state law says about calling food halal

There's no single US rule for halal in restaurants, but several states have their own halal laws, and general consumer-protection law applies everywhere. Minnesota's is a clear example. Minnesota Statutes section 31.658, "Halal products" (2025 Statutes, enacted 2001) says a person may not:

• serve, sell or display for sale food, meat or poultry falsely represented as halal;
• mark food or its packaging with the "Halal" sign unless it was prepared and maintained in compliance with the laws and customs of the Islamic religion;
• make a statement that would lead a reasonable person to believe non-halal products are halal.

It also gives a defense: you relied in good faith on a certifier's or supplier's representation that the product was prepared under Islamic religious requirements. That's the practical lesson for online ordering. A Halal mark on 40 dishes is 40 claims, so keep each supplier's halal certificate and invoices, and know which certifier stands behind your meat.

Other states, New Jersey among them, have their own halal statutes with different rules, some about disclosing the basis of the claim. Check your own state's law and your local health department. This page is a summary, not legal advice.

Tell customers what stands behind it. Use your store's landing page or the dish description: "All our chicken and lamb are zabiha halal, certified by [your certifier]." On Lite, a one-line announcement bar at the top of the menu can say it too, in up to 100 characters.

Arabic, Urdu and other names on the menu

Many halal restaurants serve customers who read the menu in more than one language.

Urdu, Somali, Turkish and Farsi aren't among the 13 menu languages. For those, use the Secondary name: it shows under the English name in the layouts that display it, and on the customer's cart and order. Automatic translation may not read the way you'd write it, so check the dishes your customers order most. More on the multilingual menu and the menu in Arabic.

Ramadan: iftar, suhoor and Eid on one link

Ramadan 1448 is expected to begin around 8 February 2027, with Eid al-Fitr around 9 or 10 March; North American councils confirm the dates, so check with your mosque. For the full timeline, slot planning and offers, see Ramadan pre-orders. Here is how a US halal restaurant sets it up.

Sunset moves a minute or so each day in February and March. Fixed time ranges don't follow it by themselves, so check your slots each week of Ramadan and edit them. Bookings due within the hour show in a red Prepare now box, so the iftar rush is cooked in slot order, not arrival order.

Delivery and family-size orders

Halal restaurants often sell family platters and catering trays with big tickets, which is where commission hurts most.

Assigning a driver is one tap on the order. There's no automatic dispatch or route planning. See the rider app and Uber Direct for your own orders. For trays booked days ahead, see online ordering for catering.

What it costs: a worked example

A restaurant takes 500 delivery orders a month at $42 on average, so $21,000: family platters, mandi and grill boxes.

App rates are each platform's published delivery commission, from our DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub pages; Grubhub also charges card processing on top. With your own ordering you carry the delivery: your drivers' pay, or the Uber Direct fee the customer pays at checkout.

Who you're serving. Pew Research Center estimated about 3.45 million Muslims of all ages in the US in 2017, about 1.1% of the population, and many halal restaurants also serve customers who simply like the food. Your own link lets you keep both groups' orders and contact details, instead of renting them from an app.

Not a fit if

• You need a certificate shown automatically. There's no certifier field. Put the certifier in the description, the landing page or the announcement bar.
• Your menu needs Urdu or Somali as a full menu language. Use secondary names for those.
• Your POS must receive web orders. There's no ready-made link to Square, Toast or Clover.

Set up online ordering for your halal restaurant

1. Create your store. Find your restaurant on Google to fill in your name, address, hours and photos.
2. Import your menu. Upload a photo or PDF of the menu, then check each dish.
3. Mark halal dish by dish. Add allergens & nutrition, switch on Halal, tick allergens and add calories.
4. Add second names. Type Arabic or Urdu names in Secondary name, in your own spelling.
5. Say who certifies. Add your certifier to the landing page, the descriptions or the announcement bar.
6. Set up Ramadan (Lite). Iftar slots, pre-orders while closed, suhoor dishes with Set Time and Eid platters with notice.
7. Connect Stripe and test. Book an iftar box for tomorrow at 5:30 PM and check the ticket.

Halal marked on every dish, 0% commission.

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