How Roman reads menus
Daily checks
Roman checks every menu as often as the license says — usually once a day. If the content hasn't changed, nothing happens. If it has, Roman reads the whole menu again and saves it as a new menu version. Versions make up the price history and the list of changes on the restaurant's page.
A menu you're waiting for — during setup or after Check now — jumps to the front of the queue.
What Roman reads
From every menu item: name, description, section, variant (e.g. size), portion and price. When a price is by weight or volume (“steak PLN 18 / 100 g”, “wine PLN 120 / l”), Roman also records the amount it's for — such a price is shown but not compared with prices per item. A portion next to a price (“steak 250 g — PLN 89”) is an ordinary price per item. Roman only takes items with a price — opening hours, allergens and descriptions of the place are skipped. Text stays as it is on the menu, in its language; Roman doesn't translate anything. When a menu has several language versions, Roman takes the first.
Menus are read by a language model (AI). It usually gets them right but can make mistakes — e.g. misread a price on a blurry photo. If something looks off, check the full menu of that version on the restaurant's page.
Matching to your dishes
For every new menu version, Roman decides which items are your dishes:
| Confidence | What happens |
|---|---|
| 95% or more | The match is accepted automatically. |
| 60–95% | The item goes to your inbox with a suggestion. |
| below 60% | The item goes to the items not on your list. |
An item matches a dish when a guest would see it as the same dish: the same kind of dish with the same main ingredients. The name, garnish and portion size may differ. Pierogi ruskie aren't pierogi with meat, and a cheeseburger isn't a veggie burger. Items that are clearly bigger or smaller ("double", "for two") usually go to the inbox.
Your decisions always win. Roman never overrides them, and they hold for later menu versions. When you change your dishes in the Catalog, Roman re-matches only the items you haven't decided on.
Baskets
When the organization has baskets, Roman also sorts every item of a new menu version — yours and the competitors' — into one course and one kind of dish while matching. An item that already has a basket keeps it. After the baskets change, Roman sorts the items on the current menus again.
Shared menus
A menu from a link is read once, however many Roman users track it. That's why, when you start tracking a restaurant someone tracked before, you see its price history right away. Matches to dishes and your decisions are yours alone. Menus from uploaded files are only visible to your team.