Why Menu Design Matters and How to Nail It

For the restaurant industry the menu you create is more than a simple list of foods. It’s an invisible marketing tool, a brand that plays a significant role to your profitability. If designed with care the menu will influence the choices of your customers, improve the dining experience of customers as well as directly increase the bottom line of your business. The question is, what can make menu design so important? How do you make sure that you’ve got the right design?

Make your menus to draw attention to the area you wish to draw it. Studies show that diners prefer to browse in a Z-pattern or prefer the top right part of the menu initially.

• Use borders, boxes or icons to draw attention to the food items.
• Sort items in clear categorizes.
• White space is your friend.

A great dish deserves a great description. Instead of the dish’s name, you should make it a selling point:

Bad: “Grilled Chicken Salad”

More Delicious: “Char-grilled chicken breast on fresh romaine with cherries Parmesan shavings the creamy Caesar dressing”

Descriptions need to evoke tastes as well as texture and aroma, but without getting too long.

Study every dish on the basis of the popularity of each dish and its profitability. Then make the design according to

• Stars (high profits and high visibility) Note these!
• Plow-horses (low revenue and high acclaim) Make sure to promote them carefully and look into bundles.
• Puzzles (high revenue and little popularity) Rename, move or revise.
• Dogs (low revenue and not much popularity) Take into consideration getting rid of them.

Make use of this information to change the placement of your items as well as names. You can even decide how long they remain in the menus at all.

The font’s dimension, contrast of color and the alignment of your text can all impact the readability.

• Do not use fonts that are too fancy.
• You should use at a minimum 11–12-point Font size.
• Make use of color in a limited way, but use color strategically (e.g. highlight signature dishes).

Most importantly the fact that you can’t proofread menus, such as typos could be an utter turnoff.

• Make use of professional photos of food only sparingly, as too many photos can make you feel low-end.
• Use a consistent colour scheme that is consistent with the branding of your company.
• Be careful not to over-crowd the pages. Visual simpleness increases trust and makes it more elegant.

The menu you create isn’t just a once-off job. Monitor sales performance along with seasonality, feedback from customers and make adjustments as needed each month.

• Create seasonal offers
• Retire underperforming dishes
• Update the design and the language

If you are offering delivery or online ordering, be sure that your menu on the internet has the same format and brand. A lot of customers will first view the menu through Zomato, Swiggy, or your own site. So, make it count.

Designing menus can be a very effective yet often overlooked component of the toolkit for restaurants. When it is done right it can enhance the experience of customers improves sales, bolsters branding, and boosts efficiency. In order to achieve this requires both a visual sensitivities and data-driven decision-making. Begin with your brand’s identity know your audience as well as design to enhance clarity and impact, focus on what’s important while you refine.