The restaurant menu is your gateway to a world of delicious cuisine. Only top-tier food brands understand the significance of menu design, which is more than just listing food items and pricing.
The main goal of a menu is to help the customer choose what they want to eat within their budget. Besides its apparent utilitarian value in informing the customer about the item, a
well-designed menu can also serve as a promotional tool by showcasing your flair. And if menu placement is done strategically, it results in higher sales volume than would be achieved through more haphazard methods.
What is the importance of menu structure?
A restaurant’s fortunes may lie in the strength of its menu. Successful menu design can increase sales of featured items by drawing customers’ focus to those products. In addition, the best-looking menus showcase the restaurant’s most expensive meals and encourage customers to place orders.
How should the menu be laid out?
The dining experience should be reflected in the menu design. A menu should be designed hierarchically, starting with the appetizer people like to have first. Then move towards the main courses, the heart of the menu, and then proceed to some sweetness of the desserts. On pages with stronger visual appeal than others, highlight essential items by placing markers or photos around them.
Things to Know Before Designing a Menu
- Try to differentiate yourself by examining what is currently selling in the market. Examine the menus of competing businesses to see how they display their products and price them.
- Less is more. Keep fewer items to concentrate on while paying attention to legibility, crispness, and ease of reading.
- For a complete check, get consumer input on everything, including the food menu, since it is the heart of any eatery.
- Add original food description. You may use the services of a qualified copywriter. How food is described is crucial, which we shall go into in greater detail later.
- Remember, If the first order weren’t appropriately fulfilled, the customer wouldn’t return for more. So don’t go for exaggeration.
- Emphasize the unique menu option, especially for momentous occasions.
How to Design a Menu?
It is crucial to understand a restaurant menu’s function in the overall restaurant experience and how it might draw customers back. A well-designed menu will distinguish your restaurant from others with similar menus and attract new consumers looking for a new place to eat.
Let’s discuss some of the key factors through which you can make your menu design truly shine;
Font Size
Stay simple. Avoid using fancy fonts and stick to simple fonts. Ensure the fonts you’re using are easy on the eyes and not too small or too big.
Colors Scheme
All the best fast-food franchises use color theory because of the psychological impact it can have on potential customers. That’s why the color red is so prevalent in menu designs—to evoke feelings of hunger. When choosing a color for your restaurant’s menu, keeping its theme and aesthetic in mind is essential. Use bold, eye-catching colors to entice customers to place an order immediately.
Food Description
Only delicious food descriptions can make your customer crave your food and boost sales. So try to make your food description as vivid as possible. You can even add an accurate picture of certain foods to make it the customer easy to expect.
Food Item Placement
New research shows that people skim menus like books; placing your most lucrative items in the top left corner is key to drawing in more business.
Where to Make Menu?
The easiest way to make a professional menu is to hire an expert for this job, as you may find top-level experts online, such as on Fiverr, Upwork, LinkedIn, etc. You can also shop for their ready-made menu design services or ask them to make them according to your restaurant’s style.
But go for it if you have a high budget; otherwise, for start-up businesses, it is suggested to use online applications or websites such as Canva, Adobe, Visme, etc. These will make it easier for an individual owner to stand out with their menu as they have a proper layout for all eateries for each specific origin, along with having a versatile range of options of creativity.
Bad Menu Design
Listed below are a few key points that you should keep in mind when designing your menu:
- Stay moderate with the size of your font.
- Typographical or grammatical problems, or written in an unknown language.
- Misleading advertising of food products by overstating their qualities.
- Menu item descriptions are lengthy and challenging to comprehend.
- Putting all expensive items in starting or too high-priced items that a local needs help to afford.
- Using currency signs repetitively.
- Lack of food images or using fake ones.
Pro Tips For Making Menu Design Profitable
When perusing a menu, our gaze usually begins in the center, moves to the top right, and then to the top left. Menu designers have coined these three sections as the “Golden Triangle” because that’s where you’ll discover the most profitable dishes.
Conclusion
Having a well-designed menu is essential to the success of any restaurant’s business strategy. Keep the considerations mentioned above in mind while you design it if you want your restaurant’s menu to stand out and remind customers of your brand anytime they think about ordering food.