Put Your Own Domain on Your Digital Menu

Your menu doesn't have to sit on someone else's link

Every menu-MENA menu gets a working address the moment you sign up: menus.mena-x.com/your-slug. It's fine. It's also, if you're being honest about it, a little conspicuous. A four-location group building brand recognition, a coffee shop that already has traffic on its own website, an owner who just doesn't want to hand a customer a QR code pointing at a domain nobody asked about, all land on the same complaint: this should say our name.

The Custom domain page, sitting under Storefront in the admin sidebar right below QR Code, is built for that. Connect menu.yourrestaurant.com, or whatever address you already own, and the same menu, the same categories, the same prices you edit today, answers on your own hostname instead of the default one.

What actually happens when you connect one

Open the page with no domain attached and you get a single field labeled Domain, a placeholder reading menu.example.com, and one button: Connect domain. Type in a hostname you control and press it.

Behind that button, menu-MENA claims the hostname for your tenant in a way that can't race: the database write only succeeds if nobody else already holds that exact hostname, so two restaurants can't end up fighting over the same address. It also refuses outright if you type in one of the platform's own hostnames, menus.mena-x.com itself, for instance, because that address belongs to every tenant, not to any one of them.

Once the claim goes through, the page flips into its connected state: your domain at the top, a status chip reading "Waiting for DNS," and a DNS records panel underneath.

Add one DNS record

The DNS panel lists a TXT record, something like:

_menu-verify.menu.yourrestaurant.com   TXT   menucloud-domain-verification=8f3a...

That's the proof of ownership: a random token menu-MENA generated the moment you connected, published as a TXT record only you can add, because only you control DNS for that hostname. A click-to-copy button next to each row saves you retyping it into your registrar's dashboard. Depending on how your hosting is set up, an A or CNAME record can show up alongside it too, pointing the hostname itself at the app so traffic actually arrives once ownership is proven.

Add the record at your registrar, come back, and press "Check DNS again." That runs a real lookup: menu-MENA reads the TXT record fresh and separately checks that the hostname actually reaches this deployment. Both have to pass. DNS usually catches up within a few minutes, though some registrars take a few hours, which is exactly why this is a button you press again rather than a spinner you sit and wait on. The moment both checks clear, the chip turns to "Verified," a green banner shows your live URL, and the menu answers on your own address.

It's owner-only, on purpose

A manager account can open the Custom domain page and see everything on it, but Connect domain, Check DNS again, and Remove domain are blocked for anyone who isn't the owner, both in the interface and on the server, so it isn't something a determined click can get around. Repointing or dropping the domain your whole storefront answers on takes the same discipline as staff permissions elsewhere in the dashboard: one person's call, not a setting anyone with access can flip.

Your old link never disappears

Connecting a custom domain doesn't retire menus.mena-x.com/your-slug. Both addresses keep serving the same live menu, at the same time, for as long as you want. Print material with the old link on it doesn't go stale, and if you decide to disconnect the custom domain later, the confirmation dialog tells you exactly what happens: your storefront stops answering on your domain right away, and the default link keeps working, untouched.

What does change once you're verified is which address search engines are told is the real one. Your public menu's canonical URL switches to your custom domain the moment verification passes. If showing up in Google search matters to you, that's not a cosmetic detail, it's the difference between ranking signals accumulating on a link with your name in it or one with menu-MENA's.

A few things worth knowing before you start

• One domain per tenant. Connecting a second one replaces the first. The old claim is only released after the new one succeeds, so a rejected attempt never costs you the domain that was already working.
• Squatting doesn't lock a domain forever. If someone connects a domain and never finishes the DNS step, that claim expires after 48 hours and the hostname becomes claimable again. A domain that's actually verified never expires this way, because at that point whoever holds it has proven they control the DNS.
• You still log into your dashboard the normal way. /admin on a custom domain redirects straight back to the main app address. The custom domain is for the public-facing menu, not a second door into your account.

Is it worth doing

If your brand only exists on the address customers type in a browser, the answer is straightforward. It's the same subscription, the same 90 EGP a month or 1,000 EGP a year, no separate add-on to buy, and it's covered by the 14-day free trial too. The setup is one DNS record and one button press. What you get back is a menu that lives at your address, not a third party's, on every QR code you print and every link you hand a customer from now on.