We started out convinced we’d have a digital menu ready to sell in two weeks. It took months. We contradicted ourselves at least three times along the way. And only now (with the platform live) can I say honestly what actually happened.
We thought AI would do the job
Andrei went first. He fired up an AI website builder, convinced we’d have something to show the world in a few hours. What came out was generic. Very generic. The kind of digital menu that could be for anything, from a pizza place in Cluj to an international chain, without accounting for anything specific to our market.
And here I have to say something, because I’ve watched this happen over and over these past few months: there’s a massive wave of “platforms” and “solutions” generated with AI, most of it pure slop. People think they’ve caught lightning in a bottle and generate anything, as if that automatically brings sales. Well… it doesn’t. A generic product, with no research behind it, with no understanding of who it’s actually selling to, stays generic no matter how many prompts you throw at it.
AI doesn’t know (yet!) the difference between a neighborhood bistro and a 40-location chain. It doesn’t know what it means to sell a small cafe in Balotești the same solution you’d sell a restaurant in downtown Bucharest. The result was technically correct… and completely useless.
We dropped the “AI builds everything” idea in under a month. We did keep AI close by, for brainstorming, for copy when we were stuck, for quick ideas when our brains refused to produce anything. As a support tool, it’s great. As a replacement for research and business decisions, it’s a wall straight ahead.
The research we put off for too long
After the AI failure, we did what we should have done from the start: real research. Who else makes digital menus in Romania, what do they offer, how much do they cost, where are they weak… and so on.
We went further. We ran a survey and (to our surprise) people from the industry actually answered, restaurant and cafe owners. The biggest pain point they named clearly was monthly costs on existing solutions. We learned a few other things there too, some pretty useful for Meniola’s direction, but those stay in our strategy drawer, not in this article.
The conclusion was simple and a little painful: Romania wasn’t missing another QR menu. It was missing one built by people who understand design, technology, and the business side of a small HoReCa operation, all at once. That’s how Meniola.ro started taking shape, an online menu platform built for people who want something fast to implement, not a technical headache.
Why we mixed WordPress with Next.js
The first big decision came after almost a month of discussions. We built the presentation site in WordPress. The reason is simple, and a little selfish: I want to be able to change a photo, a text, a price myself, without bothering Andrei every single time. That independence matters more than it seems at the start of a project (especially when there are only 2 of you behind it…).
The actual platform, the one where clients build their digital menu, manage the QR code and orders, is in Next.js. There we needed something else: speed, full technical control, something Andrei could develop without compromises.
It was a mixed decision, but that’s exactly why it worked: independence for me on the presentation side, controlled costs long term, flexibility on the technical side. There’s no single technology that solves everything, and at some point we had to accept that.
The hours you never factor in
Here comes the painfully honest part. We redid the UI more times than I can count, rebuilt features that seemed finished, then realized they didn’t work right in real scenarios. We tested… retested and found bugs in exactly the spots where we swore everything was perfect.
The dashboard UI went through several iterations before we landed a version that actually made sense for a new user. A restaurant owner doesn’t want to learn new software. They want to upload the menu and go home in peace.
There was no “easy” part of this project. Design, features, testing, all of it demanded the same amount of time and the same amount of patience. If someone tells you they launched a SaaS in a few weeks with no late nights on research or debugging, they either got incredibly lucky or they’re not telling you the whole truth.
Where we are now
Meniola.ro is live. We built a stable online menu platform but there’s always something to improve (as is normal for any product that just launched). We offer a free digital menu for anyone who wants to test it, and paid tiers for those who need more, including WhatsApp ordering, a differentiator we haven’t seen with many others in the Romanian market.
We’ve posted a few times on social media, friends shared it happily, and yet, honestly, we don’t have a single concrete lead yet. It’s too early to draw clear conclusions from this little time. Right now we’re learning from organic SEO, trying to understand how people search for a QR code menu or a cheap digital menu app, before we launch paid campaigns on Facebook.
What we learned
- AI is a great brainstorming tool, not a replacement for research and business decisions.
- Technical independence (being able to edit something simple yourself) matters more than you’d think, at least early on.
- There’s no single perfect technology. Sometimes the right answer is a mix, WordPress and Next.js, in our case.
- Redoing, testing, and retesting aren’t signs you’re doing something wrong. They’re a normal part of building any serious product.
- Organic growth is slow, and patience matters as much as strategy.
What’s next
If you have a restaurant, a cafe, a small local producer, and want a digital menu you can set up fast, you can try Meniola for free right now. If you want to follow how we evolve, you’ll find us on social media.
And if you’re at the start of your own product journey and want to work with someone who’s already been through this whole process (research, design, development, testing), Andrei and I also offer separate development, UI/UX, and branding services. Meniola.ro is, in the end, clear proof that we know what we’re talking about.
Comments are closed