Serving Arabic-speaking guests well: a guide for non-Arabic restaurants

To serve Arabic-speaking guests well, write plainly what is in each dish, including pork and any alcohol used in cooking, and let a member of staff answer halal questions, because halal depends on your suppliers, not your recipe. Add Arabic names and descriptions for your best sellers, choose one kind of Arabic and keep to it, and decide before service who reads a note written in Arabic. Those four steps cover most of what goes wrong.

This guide is for restaurants where nobody, or almost nobody, on staff speaks Arabic. It covers the questions to prepare for, which Arabic to use, a phrase card for staff, and a worked example at Casa Olivo.

Who are your Arabic-speaking guests?

Short answer: visitors and locals from many countries, who share one written language and speak many different dialects.

International travel keeps growing: UN Tourism estimates 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals in 2025, “almost 60 million more than in 2024” (UN Tourism, 20 Jan 2026). Arabic-speaking guests at your tables may be families visiting from the Gulf, students, business travellers, or residents who have lived near you for years.

That matters for language. Written Arabic has a shared standard, Modern Standard Arabic, which educated readers across the region understand. Spoken Arabic varies: a guest from Riyadh, one from Cairo and one from Beirut will each phrase “what do you recommend?” differently. A menu written in the standard works for all of them; a chat can go either way, which we’ll come back to.

Ask your servers and any hotels nearby where your Arabic-speaking guests come from and when. Seasons differ by country and by the holiday calendar, and your own booking records are better evidence than any national average.

Which questions should you be ready for?

Short answer: pork, alcohol, halal meat, and the usual allergy and spice questions. Some your menu can answer; halal needs a person.

Two points behind that table.

Halal is about sourcing. A recipe can contain no pork and no alcohol and still not be halal if the meat wasn’t slaughtered and supplied that way. Only you know your suppliers. So the honest answer comes from a person, and the honest menu line is a specific one. “Halal-friendly” tells a careful guest nothing.

Write it down even if you think it’s obvious. Many guests won’t ask about pork or alcohol out loud. They’ll read the description, and if it says nothing, they’ll either guess or skip the dish.

Should you translate your menu into Arabic?

Short answer: for your best sellers, yes. A full translation of a long menu is worth it only if Arabic-speaking guests are a large share of your tables.

If you print Arabic, a few things go wrong often:

• Have a native speaker check it. Machine translation of dish names produces literal nonsense. Arabic text that is set in software without proper Arabic support can also come out with disconnected or reversed letters.
• Arabic reads right to left. A bilingual menu works best with Arabic in its own column or block, not squeezed into the English line.
• Translate the description, keep the name. “Pulpo a la gallega” can stay as it is, written in Latin letters or sounded out in Arabic, with an Arabic line saying what it is: octopus, potatoes, olive oil, paprika.
• Start with the top 10 to 15 dishes. They carry most orders. The rest can follow.

Which Arabic should the chat use?

Short answer: the one most of your Arabic-speaking guests speak, or Modern Standard Arabic if they come from many places.

WaiterPilot lets the owner choose the Arabic its chat uses: Jordanian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Gulf (Emirati), Saudi or Modern Standard Arabic. The chat answers in that setting whatever dialect the guest writes in. In our 15 Oct 2026 test at BroadNet.AI’s own demo café, a question written in Gulf Arabic was answered in Jordanian, because that is what the café had chosen, and the guest’s buttons were in Arabic. The setting doesn’t affect anyone else: guests who write in other languages are still answered in theirs.

Any of these will be understood by most Arabic speakers. The choice is about sounding natural to the guests you see most.

What does the guest see in WaiterPilot?

Short answer: Arabic buttons, an Arabic chat, and your dish names with Arabic names alongside where you have saved them.

The guest screen has an EN/AR switch for the buttons, so an Arabic-speaking guest sees the buttons and tabs in Arabic: the waiter call, the chat, the menu and the bill. This is a real fit; for most other languages the buttons stay in English. Guests chat in their own words, and the chat answers questions from your menu. When your menu doesn’t cover a question, such as where the lamb comes from, it tells the guest to ask a member of staff.

In our test, the chat listed dishes from the menu with their saved Arabic names next to them. The owner’s menu editor shows how much of the menu an Arabic-speaking guest reads in Arabic: sections, dish names, descriptions, choice labels and options. Anything without Arabic text shows in English.

For allergies, WaiterPilot gives what your menu says and asks the guest to confirm with staff; your staff always have the final word. More detail is on the allergies and dietary questions page.

A worked example: an Arabic-speaking family at Casa Olivo

Casa Olivo is a fictional Mediterranean restaurant (an example, not a customer). The menu figures and the conversation below are illustrations written for this post, not measurements or a recorded chat.

Before the season. Casa Olivo has 48 dishes. The owner adds Arabic names for all 48 and Arabic descriptions for the 12 best sellers. The menu editor then shows dish names 48 of 48 and descriptions 12 of 48, or 25%. An Arabic-speaking guest reads the other 36 descriptions in English. Since the 12 best sellers carry most orders, that’s a sensible first step; the next 12 can follow.

Most of Casa Olivo’s Arabic-speaking guests in summer are Gulf families, so the owner sets the chat to Gulf (Emirati). The menu now says “contains pork” on two dishes, “cooked with white wine” on three, and “our chicken and lamb are halal-certified” on the menu’s first page. (That last line is only true because Casa Olivo’s supplier provides certificates. Don’t copy it unless yours does.)

Friday, 20:10, table 12, a family of six. The father switches the screen to Arabic and writes in the chat:

Guest: وش فيه الريزوتو؟ فيه خمر؟ (What’s in the risotto? Is there wine in it?)

WaiterPilot: حسب القائمة، ريزوتو الفطر مطبوخ بالنبيذ الأبيض. إذا تبي طبق بدون كحول، المشاوي والسلطات ما فيها نبيذ حسب القائمة. (According to the menu, the mushroom risotto is cooked with white wine. If you’d like a dish without alcohol, the grills and salads contain no wine, according to the menu.)

He asks whether the lamb is halal. The menu’s first page says it is, so the chat repeats that. If the menu said nothing, it would tell him to ask a member of staff.

The family orders mezze to share and two grills, one with the note “بدون بصل” (no onions). Here is what each person sees:

Marta can’t read the note, so she checks it at the table before confirming, using the phrase card below. At 21:30 the family asks for the check. The chat asks cash or card, Marta brings the card terminal, and the family splits the bill evenly on their phones. Payment goes through Casa Olivo’s own terminal; WaiterPilot takes no payment.

A phrase card for staff

Print this and keep it at the pass. Pronunciations are approximate.

For anything longer than a word or two, a camera translation app on one staff phone handles most short notes.

When is another tool a better fit?

Short answer: when you need payment at the table, especially in the Gulf.

WaiterPilot doesn’t take payment and has no POS or printer connection. If you are in Saudi Arabia or the UAE and want guests to pay on their phone, local pay-at-table tools are built for it. As published on 15 Oct 2026, Qlub, established in Dubai, runs an Arabic version of its site and sells pay at table (Qlub). WaiterPilot can sit next to a payment tool: guests order and ask questions with WaiterPilot, and pay however you already take payment.

What to do next

1. Mark pork and alcohol, including alcohol in cooking, on every dish.
2. Write one true sentence about halal meat, or about not serving it.
3. Add Arabic names and descriptions for your top 12 dishes, checked by a native speaker.
4. Print the phrase card.
5. Decide who checks Arabic notes on the first order.

If Ramadan brings Arabic-speaking guests to you at sunset, read our guide to the iftar rush. To see the Arabic screen, read the multilingual ordering test or try a sample order. WaiterPilot costs $200 per location per month after 30 days free, with 0% commission; the details are on the pricing page.