Few things lose a booking faster than a menu that won’t load. If yours has stopped showing, it’s almost always one of a handful of causes. Work through them in order.
1. The link or file moved
If your menu is a linked PDF, the most common cause is that the file was re-uploaded under a new name or to a new location, and the link now points at nothing. Open the menu link in a private browser window — if you get a 404 or a blank page, the file path is broken.
2. The PDF is being blocked or downloaded
Some browsers and phones won’t display a PDF inline — they download it instead, or block it behind a security prompt. To the visitor that looks like “the menu isn’t showing.” If it works on your desktop but not on a phone, this is usually why.
3. The page is cached
If you updated the menu but the old one (or none) still shows, your site or CDN may be serving a cached version. A hard refresh, or clearing the site cache, will tell you whether the new file is actually live.
4. An embed or plugin broke
If the menu was shown through a third-party embed or a plugin, an update, an expired account or a script error can take it down silently. Check your browser’s console for errors, and confirm the embedding service is still active.
5. It never worked on mobile
Sometimes the menu “shows” on desktop but is unusable on a phone — tiny, zoomed, or off-screen. Most of your visitors are on mobile, so a menu that only works on desktop is, in practice, a menu that isn’t showing.
Every cause above traces back to the same root: the menu depends on a file path, a cache or a third-party tool that can break without warning. Remove that fragility and the problem goes away.
The permanent fix
Instead of a linked file or a fragile embed, render the menu through a widget that lives on your page and reads from a dashboard. There’s no link to break, the mobile view is built in, and updating the menu is a single upload. Foldout’s PDF menu widget is designed for exactly this — so “the menu isn’t showing” stops being a thing that can happen.