I travel a lot for work. As such, I eat out a lot. As such such, I look at a lot of places' menus without physically being there (since I don't know the area, I don't know where to eat, so I look at the reviews and images posted online).

A restaurant's soup selection will likely not be the thing that decides if I eat there or somewhere else, but sometimes soup is the only side dish that sounds appetizing, and if I don't know what kind of soup the restaurant serves I'll probably just pick somewhere else.

Or in a similar vein, they list soup on their menu, but it's only one soup and it's "soup of the day".

On one hand, you know they HAVE soup, which is a slight improvement over not listing any. But you still have no idea what it is.

That’s when you gotta pick up the home and call but is it really worth the effort?

If they only serve a single type of soup per day but listed all of them on the menu, the staff would definitely have to deal with disgruntled customers who don't understand why they can't order the thing they're reading off the menu.

A lot of places do soups and salads based on seasonal availability, and IMO having something on the menu that's unavailable is a worse customer experience than not having them on the menu and having the waiter/waitress tell them the daily offerings.

Nope!

tbh if the menu is online they can just specify what today's soup is

Not really. At least, not in a way that doesn’t require constantly updating the website.

“Soups of the day” are generally an outlet for leftovers or a way to use up less desirable parts of other produce without just tossing them, so generally they’ll make whatever they have with what they got.

most places I have went to have a selection of soups, usually at least two, offered all the time and then a soup of the day.

In theory, sure,

In reality, I promise you no overworked restaurant staff wants to bother with updating a website daily on the off-chance someone needs to know the soupe du jour. You'd probably just get the wrong information because no one updated it.

If you absolutely must know the soup availability, you can always just call the restaurant. The employees will make fun of you behind your back, but they'll pretend to be glad to inform you!

If the always-available soups aren't on the menu, I agree that's dumb. However, I highly doubt that's what's happening to OP.

Yeah I kinda wonder because I see it often enough on online menus. it will say X, and Y, and such and then soup of the day and yeah you have to go to find out what it is. Generally I have a soup in their everyday that im fine with. It sorta cracks me up the everyday soups sometimes. Like one place always had matza ball. I figure if I had one it would be tomato that is vegan friendly and then chicken noodle and like a beef and vegetable.

And most of them are fucking PDF anyway, so another layer of editing and likely a layer removed from daily management

This is what I love in Germany, they have soup and salad everywhere, even in the most unlikely of restaurants.

Salad sure that's just a Dönerteller without meat, but I've never seen a Döner that offered soup.

Reminds me of a customer complaining, "no, I've had soup du jour before and this is not it!!"

Most restaurants here have soup and salad as well, I just have no idea what kind

Also from Dumb and Dumber:

"Excuse me, what's the soupe du jour?"

"It's the soup of the day."

"Oh, that sounds good, I'll have that."