How to Set Up a WhatsApp Business Catalog for Your Restaurant Menu

A WhatsApp Business catalog is a menu that lives inside your business profile on the free WhatsApp Business app. Customers open your chat, tap the shop icon, browse items with photos and prices, add them to a cart and send the cart to you as a single message. Setting one up takes about an hour for a 40-item menu and costs nothing.

This guide covers what to prepare before you start, the exact steps in the app, how to organise items into collections, how to share the catalog, and what happens when a customer sends you a cart. It ends with the points where the catalog runs out and what to use instead.

What a WhatsApp Business catalog does for a restaurant

Before the catalog, the first message in most restaurant chats was "menu?" and the reply was a blurry photo. The catalog replaces that exchange. Your menu is one tap away inside the chat, every item has a price, and the customer can build an order without typing.

For you, it means fewer "what do you have" conversations, fewer price disputes, and cart messages that list items and quantities clearly. It also gives you a shareable link, so the same menu works from your Instagram bio or a QR code on the counter. The catalog is the second of the three methods described in the guide on how to take orders on WhatsApp. The complete guide to WhatsApp ordering systems covers the third.

Before you start: get your items ready

Adding items is quick when the content is ready and painful when you are hunting for photos between taps. Prepare these for each item.

• A photo. Square, well lit, one dish per image. A phone photo on a plain plate near a window beats a dark restaurant shot. You can add more than one image per item.
• A name as it appears on your printed menu, so staff and customers use the same words.
• A price. If an item has half and full sizes, decide now whether to list them as two items or mention the sizes in the description. The catalog has no variant selector.
• A short description. Two lines at most: what is in it, how spicy, whether it is veg. Mention portion size for dishes that are shared.
• An item code (optional) that matches your billing software, which makes copying cart orders into bills faster.

Start with your 20 to 30 best sellers. You can add the long tail later. A tight catalog of dishes you actually want to sell converts better than 120 items including three kinds of papad.

Step by step: adding your menu to the WhatsApp Business catalog

1. Open the WhatsApp Business app and go to Business tools (on Android, tap the three dots then Business tools; on iPhone, it is in Settings).
2. Tap Catalog. If this is your first time, you will see a short introduction and an Add new item button.
3. Tap Add new item. Add one or more images from your gallery or camera.
4. Enter the item name and price. Choose your currency once; it applies to the whole catalog.
5. Add the description, an optional link (for example to a longer web menu) and an optional item code.
6. Tap Save. The item is submitted for review. Meta checks catalog items against its commerce policies, which for food is quick and routine, but items can sit as "pending" for a short while and occasionally get rejected for reasons like a missing price.
7. Repeat for each item. Your catalog is live as soon as items are approved; you do not need to publish anything separately.

Once a few items exist, open any item and use Hide to take it off the menu temporarily (sold out tonight) without deleting it, and Edit to change the price.

If your number is on the WhatsApp Business API rather than the app, the catalog is managed in Meta's Commerce Manager instead, and your platform may handle it for you.

Organise items into collections

Collections are groups inside the catalog, the equivalent of sections on a printed menu. Without them, a customer scrolls a single long list. With them, they tap Starters, Mains, Breads, Combos or Desserts.

1. In Catalog, tap Add new collection.
2. Name it. Use the same section names as your printed menu.
3. Select the items that belong in it and save. Collections are reviewed like items.

Useful collections for a restaurant are the obvious menu sections plus one or two that sell: Today's Specials, Family Packs, Under ₹150. Keep the most profitable collection at the top. A dedicated Combos collection is worth building even if combos are just two existing items at a small discount; it lifts average order value with no extra kitchen work.

Share the catalog everywhere customers look

The catalog has a link of the form wa.me/c/ followed by your number. Find it under Catalog, then the three-dot menu, then Share or Copy link. Put it in:

• Your Instagram bio and story highlights.
• Your Google Business Profile as the menu link.
• A quick reply named /menu so staff can send it in two taps.
• A QR code on the counter, table tents and packaging.

You can also send a single item or a whole collection into a chat. Open the item, tap the share icon, and pick the chat. This is a tidy way to answer "do you have paneer tikka" with the item card instead of a yes.

In the chat itself, customers reach the catalog by tapping your business name at the top and then the shop icon, or through the storefront icon next to the attachment button.

How customers order from the catalog, and what you receive

A customer browsing your catalog taps Add to cart on each item, adjusts quantities, and taps Send to business. You receive a message that lists the items, quantities and a subtotal, with a View cart button.

That is where the automation ends. From here the order is a normal chat. You need to:

1. Confirm the items are available tonight.
2. Ask whether it is delivery or pickup, and get the address.
3. Add the delivery charge and any packaging charge, and send a final total.
4. Collect payment with a UPI ID, a payment link or cash on delivery.
5. Write the order into your billing system or KOT and tell the customer the time.

Set up quick replies for steps 2 to 4 so the whole exchange takes under two minutes. The auto reply and quick reply messages for food businesses post has copy-and-paste text for each step.

Catalog housekeeping that keeps orders clean

• Hide sold-out items before service, not after the first disappointed customer. Un-hide them the next morning.
• Change prices in the catalog the same day you change the printed menu. A customer who orders at the catalog price and is charged more will argue, and they will be right.
• Keep names identical to your bill. "Chicken Biryani (Full)" in the catalog and "CB Full" on the bill confuses staff at 9 pm.
• Review photos every few months. A dish that changed plating should get a new image.
• Check the pending and rejected status after bulk edits. A rejected item silently vanishes from the customer's view.

Where the catalog falls short

The catalog is a menu, not an ordering system. It cannot offer size variants or add-ons on one item, cannot calculate delivery charges by distance, does not collect an address, does not take payment, does not show order status, and does not tell you how many orders you did last month. Every one of those steps is still a human in the chat. The limits are laid out in why a WhatsApp catalog is not a real ordering system.

For many small restaurants the catalog is the right first step and stays enough for months. When orders start arriving faster than one person can price and confirm them, an ordering bot on the WhatsApp Business API takes over the steps after the cart. Tezzu is one way to do that: your menu moves to a bot on the same number with variants, add-ons and combos, delivery zones, UPI and card payment, and a free store page at tezzu.in/store/your-name, at ₹10 per order with no commission. The guide to building a menu with categories, variants, add-ons and bundles shows how a catalog menu maps across.

Frequently asked questions

How many items can I add to a WhatsApp Business catalog?

The app allows a few hundred items per catalog (the documented limit at the time of writing is 500), which is far more than a restaurant menu needs. The practical limit is what customers will scroll through. Collections help, but a catalog of 30 to 60 items that you keep current performs better than a complete list of everything you have ever cooked.

Can customers pay through the WhatsApp Business catalog?

Not within the catalog itself. The cart is sent to you as a message, and payment is collected separately: a UPI ID or QR, a payment link from your bank or a gateway, or cash on delivery. WhatsApp Pay exists in India for person-to-business payments in some cases, but for a reliable flow most restaurants send a payment link or use an ordering system that handles payment inside the chat.

Why was my catalog item rejected?

Common reasons are a missing or zero price, an image that includes text overlays or watermarks, a description that mentions a prohibited product, or a name that does not match the image. Edit the item to fix the issue and resubmit. Food items with a clear photo, a plain name and a price are approved quickly as a rule.

Can I add menu variants like half and full in the catalog?

The catalog has no variant selector. The workaround is to create separate items ("Dal Makhani Half" and "Dal Makhani Full") or to list sizes in the description and ask the customer to specify in chat. Add-ons such as extra cheese work the same way. If variants and add-ons are a large part of your menu, an ordering bot handles them properly.