Sell More on Wolt and Bolt Food: 7 Details the Algorithm Sees

When a restaurant signs up for Wolt or Bolt Food, the assumption is usually that registration is the hard part — orders will follow on their own. Open the app and look, though: in one neighbourhood, with one type of cuisine, dozens of places sit in the same list, all waiting for the same tap. Where your restaurant lands in that list, and who actually gets the order, is decided less by the sign-up form than by what's written inside the menu itself.

This isn't a guessing game about a hidden formula. Platforms don't publish their full ranking logic, but their own engineering writeups show what the system is actually reading: dish names, descriptions, photos, how accurate the prep time is, how often orders get cancelled. The 7 items below are things you can check yourself today, on your phone, no paid tool required.

Who finds you: the menu text is the search

1. The dish name is a keyword, not decoration

When a customer types "kebab" into search, the system reads every menu's item names, matches them by meaning, and ranks the result. In February 2026, Wolt's own engineering team published an article explaining that its search and recommendation system is built on item name, description and ingredients — the text is turned into a vector representation, and the customer's query is compared against it (Wolt Engineering, "Wolt's Embeddings Framework"). In practice: an internal label like "Set 2" or "#14" means something to you but almost nothing to the system — a customer searching "chicken shawarma" will not find that item, even if it's exactly what you sell. Do this week: go through your menu, find the coded names, and replace each with its main ingredient ("Chicken shawarma, white sauce").

2. An empty description field is invisibility

The same article shows the system reads descriptions too, not just names — the more text material it has, the more precisely it can tell what a dish actually is. A one-word name with a blank description gives the system less to work with, which means it surfaces in fewer searches. Check it yourself: open five random items in the Portal and count how many have a description versus just a name. Do this week: add one or two sentences to every item — what it's made of, which sauce it comes with, how many people it serves.

3. The photo has to be your own kitchen, not a stock shot

Someone opening a menu for the first time decides in a couple of seconds, and that decision is usually driven by the photo, not the text. The same burger photo showing up, identically, across dozens of unrelated menus tells the customer exactly what it is: someone's stock image, not a dish from your kitchen. Check it yourself: open your own menu in the app and count how many photos look "too clean" — artificial light, gloss, the catalogue look. Do this week: shoot real photos, in your own kitchen, in daylight, against a plain background, for at least the 10-15 items that drive most of your sales.

After the order: how the system "remembers" you

4. Prep time has to be accurate

The "preparation time" field in the Merchant Portal isn't a reference note — it's the number that decides when the courier is told to arrive and what delivery time the customer sees. Set it lower than reality and the courier shows up before the food is ready and waits in your kitchen; set it higher and the customer waits longer than necessary and gets annoyed. Both scenarios end the same way: a late order, a lower rating, a negative review. Nobody outside the platform knows the full ranking formula, but the logic is plain — a restaurant with a persistently low rating will not be the one shown first to the next customer. Do this week: time your actual prep with a stopwatch for a week, match the Portal number to it, and re-check a month later.

5. Close out-of-stock items the moment they run out

A customer orders, you call to say "we're out today" or cancel the order outright — that annoys the customer and raises the cancellation rate on your account at the same time. A restaurant with a high cancellation rate reads as unreliable, and an unreliable restaurant drops in search results. Check it yourself: look at last month's cancelled orders and count how many were "item unavailable". Do this week: deactivate a sold-out item in the Portal the moment it runs out, especially in the evening rush, and put one person on the kitchen team in charge of it.

Reputation: ratings and language

6. Replying to reviews isn't just politeness

A new customer choosing between two similar restaurants looks at the star rating first, but the decision often comes down to the most recent reviews. An unanswered negative review sends one signal — "this place doesn't hear complaints" — while a short, calm, specific reply sends the opposite one: someone is there, and they see the problem. Check it yourself: look at your last 10 reviews and count how many got a reply. Do this week: answer the ones without a reply, especially the negative ones, with a specific "here's what we're doing" rather than a generic apology.

7. One name, one price, across three languages

In Baku one customer searches "kabab", another searches "шаурма" — both looking for the same dish, in a different language. If the menu only exists in Azerbaijani, the Russian-searching customer either doesn't find it or sees a different name and, sometimes, an outdated price. That's a search loss and a trust problem at once — a price mismatch is one of the fastest ways to lose an order to a cancellation. Check it yourself: open the Russian version of your menu and compare the name and price of your top 10 items against the Azerbaijani version. Do this week: align the name, price and portion size for at least your best-selling items across AZ and RU (and EN where you can).

A menu never lets anyone taste the food — the whole decision has to be made by the name, the photo and the number alone.

What to do next

None of these 7 items is a big project on its own, but together they move both visibility and order count. Some — photos, names, descriptions — are one-time work; others — prep time, stock, reviews — need ongoing attention. If you don't have the time, or this is your first time inside a Merchant Portal, we can handle the Wolt and Bolt Food registration, the menu setup and the three-language naming for you — from commission-aware pricing to the food photography itself.