How to read a menu date (and why it matters)

Here’s the easy bit to miss: the page can be new while the menu photo is old. The date that matters is the one on the menu evidence, not the day the website was updated.

The date is written on the menu

Every price in this archive sits on a menu, and every menu carries a date. The date is read from the menu itself, from the page text of the source archive. It is never taken from a file name, a crawl timestamp, or the day the catalogue was rebuilt.

That distinction is the whole point. A price without its date is close to meaningless, because menus change. A price with a date is a fixed statement: on that day, that shop wrote that amount on that line.

It is not the date the photo was taken

Here’s the machinery: the archive is built from photos of menus. We read the photo and keep the date printed on the menu beside the prices we read from it. Two dates, two different meanings - they don’t merge.

The photo may have been uploaded later. The menu may have been printed weeks earlier. The date attached to every price is the one on the menu, and nothing else.

A transcription, not a verification

Nothing here gets confirmed by a visit, a phone call or a human check. A price is transcribed, not confirmed. And a doubtful line isn’t quietly deleted - it stays in the archive, flagged for everyone to see.

So a menu date proves that a price was written on a menu on a given day. It does not prove that the product was on the shelf that day, that it is on the shelf now, or that the shop still trades that price. It also says nothing about the product itself. No page on this site judges what a product is like.

An old price stays old

This is the rule people miss most often. Rebuilding the catalogue does not make the records newer. A record from an older menu keeps its original date, keeps its original price, and stays in the archive.

That is deliberate. A price history that silently rewrote old entries with current values would be a fabricated history. The archive keeps the record as it was printed, and the history runs from 2007, across 251 tracked Amsterdam coffeeshops.

Fresh and last known

The site declares freshness with one threshold: the last 30 days.

• Fresh: the menu date falls inside the 30-day window. These records feed the medians on the price pages and the rankings on the cheapest pages.
• Last known: the menu is older than that. The price is kept and shown with its date, but the difference to the current median is marked as indicative, not as a current discount.

Both kinds stay visible. Hiding the older ones would remove most of the history; showing them without a label would make them look current. The label is the compromise.

Last known is not available now

A last-known price is the last price the archive saw printed. It says the shop wrote that number on that menu. It does not say the number is on offer today. The same applies to the fresh side of the archive: a price from a menu dated yesterday is still a menu price, not a live quote. The site is an archive of dated menus and never claims to be a live availability check.

What to check before you trust an old number

Read the site, not the number alone. Four things are on the page with every record.

• The menu date. It is printed next to the price. That date is the anchor for everything else.
• The freshness label. Fresh and last known are marked differently, and the two are not used the same way in rankings.
• The median next to it. A single price tells you little. The median on the same page shows where that price sits against the rest of the city for the same format.
• The sample behind it. The price pages print how many price points and how many shops the median was computed from. A median from a handful of menus is a different statement from a median from hundreds.

Read those four and an old price becomes usable as history: it tells you what was written, when, and how unusual it was for its time.

A practical reading order

On a shop page, read the menu date before the amount. Then check whether the record is marked fresh or last known, identify its category and format, and only then compare the figure with the same-format median. This avoids treating a historical minimum as a current offer or mistaking a pack total for a loose gram. A date does not become less important because a page was rebuilt today: the record remains tied to its source menu.

What the archive cannot tell you

A menu date does not prove current stock, shop opening status, quality or the price at the till. It records when the menu made a statement, not what happened afterward. The catalogue is 18+ information only, no sales. Read the freshness-label explanation and always verify on site.

A menu date is not a stock check. This site does not know what is on the shelf, does not verify anything in person, and publishes no availability information. Every price is a dated transcription. The method page explains the process, and the shop directory lets you inspect the source context for individual listings.

Save the date with the exact line

A screenshot of a price without its source date can become misleading after it leaves the page. Save the shop, menu date, category, quantity and printed wording together. If the date comes from the image rather than a separate page field, note that distinction; if you cannot read it, leave it unknown instead of guessing from the file name or page update. When you revisit the listing, compare the saved source date with the latest one shown and check whether the format changed. A newer observation can replace an older reference without making the old menu false—it remains evidence of what was printed then. The last-menu-seen guide explains the page field, and the method page describes how menu evidence enters the archive.