diff --git a/api/setup/analyzeMenuImages.cfm b/api/setup/analyzeMenuImages.cfm
index bd372e2..9b056cc 100644
--- a/api/setup/analyzeMenuImages.cfm
+++ b/api/setup/analyzeMenuImages.cfm
@@ -183,8 +183,27 @@
         </cfif>
         <cfset responseText = trim(responseText)>
         <cfset responseText = reReplace(responseText, ",(\s*[\]\}])", "\1", "all")>
+        <!--- Clean control characters and smart typography from PDFs --->
+        <cfset responseText = reReplace(responseText, "[\x00-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F]", "", "all")>
+        <cfset responseText = replace(responseText, chr(8216), "'", "all")>
+        <cfset responseText = replace(responseText, chr(8217), "'", "all")>
+        <cfset responseText = replace(responseText, chr(8211), "-", "all")>
+        <cfset responseText = replace(responseText, chr(8212), "-", "all")>
+        <cfset responseText = replace(responseText, chr(8230), "...", "all")>
 
+        <cftry>
         <cfset imageResult = deserializeJSON(responseText)>
+        <cfcatch type="any">
+            <!--- Lucee parser failed — try Jackson --->
+            <cftry>
+                <cfset objectMapper = createObject("java", "com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper")>
+                <cfset imageResult = objectMapper.readValue(responseText, createObject("java", "java.util.LinkedHashMap").getClass())>
+            <cfcatch type="any">
+                <cfthrow message="JSON parse error in image response. First 500 chars: #replace(left(responseText, 500), '##', '####', 'all')#">
+            </cfcatch>
+            </cftry>
+        </cfcatch>
+        </cftry>
         <cfset arrayAppend(allResults, imageResult)>
     </cfloop>