Readable page · assumed 0.4s
0.4s
Assumed page ready
24.3 MB file · transfer estimate
16.2s
Estimated transfer complete
The page's 0.4s display time is an assumption, not a measured result. The file's 16.2s transfer estimate is 24.3 MB ÷ an illustrative 1.5 MB/s connection. These are not like-for-like loading measurements; rendering, network variation and caching are excluded.
We looked at how 546 pubs publish their Christmas menu.
In a September 2026 snapshot across 114 companies, 543 menus were supplied as PDFs and three through flipbook viewers. The format alone is not the finding.
The finding is that 161 menus had no extractable text on page one. For those pages, the words are part of an image rather than text a customer can copy, a screen reader can speak, or a search engine can index. Nearly three in ten menus in this snapshot begin as a blank page to text-based tools.
161
29% of menus in the September 2026 snapshot. At 27 of the 114 companies, every sampled menu was a scan.
What the files contained
The file-size and page-count distributions cover 543 PDFs. The other three menus used flipbook viewers and are included only in the format breakdown.
Text on page one
PDF file sizes
Pages per PDF
The person making the booking
Christmas is not booked the way a Tuesday dinner is booked. Someone is organising thirty colleagues from a desk at two in the afternoon, with four venues open in four tabs. They need four things: what is on the menu, the price per head, what deposit is required, and which dates are free.
A scanned first page makes even the menu harder to search or copy. A PDF cannot show live availability or take a deposit by itself; changing one also requires replacing the file. Those are limits of the format, not evidence that any particular venue lost a booking.
What this does not prove
Most of these files are not large. The median PDF was 0.7 MB, and a file that size can load fine. The mean was 2.5 MB. We cannot fairly say that PDF menus are generally slow.
Size matters most at the tail: 84 PDFs were over 5 MB, including 44 over 10 MB. The largest was 24.3 MB across nine pages; the longest ran to 34 pages. At an illustrative 1.5 MB/s, transferring the largest file alone would take 16.2 seconds (24.3 ÷ 1.5), before rendering. That is arithmetic, not a measured mobile loading time.
The stronger finding is about text. A page with no extractable text layer cannot expose its words to text-based search, copying or screen-reading. Our test covered page one; it does not establish that every page in each affected file lacks text.
The same menu, two ways to read it
These are matching edited excerpts from an anonymised Christmas Day menu, not complete menus. Both views use phone-sized frames. Scroll within either frame. The left simulates a fixed-width PDF page; focus or tap it to inspect at page size, then pan sideways. It is not a measured PDF render.
Illustrative PDF-style page
CHRISTMAS DAY
ADULTS £95 PER PERSON
CHILDREN £47.50 PER PERSON
PRE-ORDER ESSENTIAL
STARTERS
HAM HOCK TERRINE
Celeriac rémoulade and crostini
SMOKED SALMON
Beetroot, dill, capers and crostini
CELERIAC AND WHITE TRUFFLE SOUP (VGN)
Warm bread
MAIN COURSES
ROAST TURKEY AND BAKED HAM
Roast potatoes, sprouts, stuffing and gravy
FILLET STEAK
Fondant potato, shallot and Bordelaise sauce
PITHIVIER (VGN)
Squash, spinach, sage and onion
DESSERTS
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
Brandy sauce and brandy cream
ROAST CLEMENTINE PAVLOVA (V)
Sour cherry and mascarpone
For allergens and intolerances, speak with a team member before ordering.
Readable page
This edited excerpt omits other dishes and shortens the original allergen notice in both views; it is not a menu to order from. This is a design comparison, not an accessibility audit or evidence about the 546-menu snapshot. The PDF-style example uses live HTML text to keep the demonstration accessible; it does not recreate a scanned image’s absent text layer. Prices and dishes are illustrative menu copy, not a current offer.
Method and limits
This report is a fixed snapshot supplied for September 2026, covering 546 pub Christmas menus associated with 114 companies. It is not a live query and should not be read as a census of UK pubs. The supplied categories distinguish 543 PDF menus from three flipbook viewers. For this report, “no readable text” means no extractable text layer on page one; 161 menus met that definition. That is a first-page finding, not proof that the rest of each file was image-only. Twenty-seven companies had every menu in the supplied sample classified as a scan.
File-size and page-count figures cover the 543 PDFs only. The five size bands and five page-count bands each sum to 543; the three viewers are excluded from those distributions. The supplied summary gives a median of 0.7 MB, mean of 2.5 MB, and a largest file of 24.3 MB. It does not provide byte-level measurement records, the scanning software, individual scan dates, the venue selection procedure, or a list of exclusions. We therefore cannot independently describe those procedures or make a representativeness claim. The load comparison above divides file size by a stated example connection speed; it does not measure real-world loading. No venue or company-level results are published here.
- Period
- September 2026 snapshot; individual collection dates not supplied.
- Denominators
- 546 menus for format and first-page text; 543 PDFs for size and page count.
- Reproducibility
- Aggregate summary supplied; underlying records and measurement tooling were not available for independent re-analysis here.