Ramadan menu planning for restaurants: iftar sets, suhoor and timing

Plan the Ramadan menu around two meals and one moment. The moment is sunset, when most of your guests want to eat at once. The two meals are iftar, best served as a set the kitchen can mostly prepare before sunset, and suhoor, a lighter late-night menu if you open late. Around them, keep a short à la carte list. Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around early February 2027 (the dates depend on the moon sighting), so settle the menu, the prices and the Arabic dish names by early January.

This post covers the menu itself: what goes in the sets, how to price them, what to prepare ahead and how to set it up for ordering. For running the service on the night, from seating to the check, see our iftar rush service plan; we don’t repeat it here.

When is Ramadan 2027, and when should you start planning?

Short answer: around early February 2027, depending on the moon sighting; start about eight weeks before.

Ramadan begins with the sighting of the new moon, so the exact start date isn’t fixed in advance and can differ by a day between countries. Plan for early February and confirm the date with your local religious authority closer to the time. Working back from the first iftar:

Supplier orders matter more than usual. Many restaurants plan similar menus for the same weeks, and a missing ingredient on day three is a menu change you didn’t plan.

What should a set iftar menu include?

Short answer: a fixed sequence that starts the moment the fast ends, with two or three choices per course.

Most iftar menus follow the same arc: something to break the fast, something warm, something to share, the main, something sweet. A typical structure:

The fewer choices, the more the kitchen can do ahead, and the faster guests decide. Two or three per course is enough. Keep one vegetarian main and make sure every dish’s description says what is in it, because guests will ask, and some will ask about allergies.

How do you plan a suhoor menu?

Short answer: short, lighter and quick to cook, for a later and smaller team.

Suhoor is the meal before dawn. If you open late, it is a different service from iftar: guests arrive over several hours rather than at one moment, and they want something lighter. Plan it as its own short menu, not as the iftar menu with fewer dishes:

• Keep it to dishes one or two cooks can make quickly: eggs, foul, cheese and olives, labneh, manakish, fruit, yogurt, tea and coffee.
• Offer a suhoor platter for sharing, so a table orders one thing.
• Stop serving what you can’t make well late. A grill item that needs the whole line belongs at iftar.
• Decide when suhoor ends, and when iftar dishes stop being offered.

How do you price an iftar set?

Short answer: add up the plate cost of every course and compare the total with the price, the same way you would for any dish.

Casa Olivo is a fictional restaurant (an example, not a customer). Costs and price are assumptions for the arithmetic.

At a set price of $34, food cost is $12.80 ÷ $34 = 37.6% of the price. Compare that with your usual target. If it is too high, the levers are the main (the biggest cost), the number of starters, or the price. Two checks before you settle:

• Price the most expensive choice, not only the average. If the lamb costs $9.20 and most guests choose it, the set costs $15.50 per guest, which is 45.6% of $34.
• Price a child’s set or a smaller set for families, so a table of six isn’t priced out.

Our post on menu engineering shows how to compare dishes on margin and popularity after the first week.

What can be prepared before sunset?

Short answer: almost everything except the plating of hot food.

Follow your local food-safety rules for holding food hot and cold, and label every batch with its time. The more you prepare ahead, the more those rules matter.

How do you plan the team around the menu?

Short answer: move work earlier, and plan staff breaks into the timing.

Many of your staff will be fasting too. Three changes help:

• Shift prep earlier. Most of the table above happens in the afternoon, so schedule cooks accordingly.
• Plan staff iftar in turns, agreed at the pre-shift briefing, so the line never empties at the busiest moment.
• Feed the team. A staff iftar from the same set, served in turns, is simpler than separate staff food.

The service side, including who confirms orders and handles check requests at the end of the meal, is in our iftar rush plan.

How do you set up the Ramadan menu for ordering?

Short answer: make the set one dish with required choices, write every name in Arabic and English, and plan who switches dishes on and off.

If guests order with WaiterPilot, a few settings carry the menu:

• A set menu is one dish with choice groups. Required choices, such as the soup or the main, must be picked before an order can be confirmed, so the kitchen gets a complete order.
• Arabic names. Dish names show as written on your menu. The owner’s menu editor shows Arabic coverage: what an Arabic-speaking guest reads in Arabic, and anything missing, which they see in English instead. Fill in every set, choice and drink.
• The chat’s Arabic. The owner chooses the dialect the chat uses: Jordanian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Gulf (Emirati), Saudi or Modern Standard Arabic. Guests who write in other languages are still answered in theirs; in our test on 15 October 2026, a Spanish question was answered in Spanish.
• Questions about the dishes. Answers come from your menu, so the description of each course is what the chat says. For allergies, it gives what the menu says and asks the guest to confirm with staff, who have the final word.
• Switching between iftar, suhoor and sold out. We don’t publish a timed menu switch, so plan to do it by hand. An owner or manager can mark a dish sold out from a phone and it stops being offered right away. Name the person who switches suhoor dishes on and iftar dishes off each night.
• New menu, loaded for you. Send the Ramadan menu as a PDF or photos; we load it and you check it before it goes live. Allow time in week 3 of the timeline.

Our guide to serving Arabic-speaking guests covers dish names and dialect in more depth, and the multilingual ordering page shows the Arabic guest screen.

A Ramadan menu checklist

1. Formats decided: set iftar, à la carte, suhoor, takeaway.
2. Two or three choices per course, including a vegetarian main.
3. Every course costed; most expensive choice checked.
4. Child’s or smaller set priced.
5. Supplier orders confirmed for week one.
6. Prep list written: what is made in the afternoon, what at service.
7. Every dish described, with ingredients and allergens.
8. Arabic and English names for every set, choice and drink.
9. Menu loaded and checked in your till and ordering tool.
10. Person named to switch iftar and suhoor dishes each night.
11. Staff tasting done; every server can explain the set.
12. Printed menus ready alongside any digital menu.

What to do next

Put the eight-week timeline in your calendar now, with week 8 in December. Draft the set iftar this month, cost it, and cook it once before you print anything. When the menu is final, check the Arabic names and the dish descriptions, because they are what guests read and what the chat repeats. Then read the iftar rush service plan for the night itself. WaiterPilot is $200 per location per month with no contract (see pricing). To see the Arabic guest screen, try a sample order.