A successful restaurant needs an appetizing menu just as much as a competitive location. Here’s what you need to know to avoid the pitfalls of menu design.
Once your customers are through the door, the real work starts when it comes to selling them on your food. You’ve set the ambiance, advertised in all the right places, but the reality is they won’t keep coming back if they don’t have a good experience with your food. With over one million restaurantsto compete with in the United States alone, you’ve got to make a statement. That statement starts with your menu design.
Your menu is the first visual representation of what you have to offer your customers. How you design and present your menu can help increase sales by enticing customers to consider the entire food offering and maybe even order more than they typically would. The following tips and visual marketing tools can help you design a menu that your customers won’t want to put down.
1. Recognize Scanning Patterns
Image viaEurekalert.org.
It was previously believed that customers noticed items in the top right-hand corner first, but recentresearch hints that most read the menu exactly like they would read a book. This means you want your most descriptive and best items in the top left corner.
2. Make It Logical
Image viaUnderconsideration.com.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. When you browse a menu, do you want to search through a long list of items to pick out the appetizer, drink, or main dish you want? Make it easy on your customers by sectioning your menu in a logical way. For example, you may have the following sections, as shown in this example from The Urban Tap, a restaurant in Pittsburgh:
- Booze
- Main Dishes
- Breads
- Sweets or desserts
- Sides or appetizers
A menu can be overwhelming if it is too cluttered or not presented in an organized manner. Keep it simple and logical and make it easy for your customer to order more.
3. Go Easy on the Pictures
Image by Rawpixel.com.
Too many pictures on your menu can lessen the appeal and make it seem like a cheap flier rather than a menu for a high-end restaurant. If you do choose to use photos, use them sparingly and choose quality food photos. Many consumers are picky about food photography, so it’s better to keep it simple when it comes to pictures.
4. Try Illustration
Image viaPinterest.
Sell your restaurant’s personality with a little bit of personal illustration on the menu, like this example from Lucky Strike bowling alley. Illustration is a great visual marketing tool, connecting audiences to your restaurant’s atmosphere in a unique and beautiful way. Don’t have the budget to commission your own illustration? Check out Shutterstock’s millions of carefully made, royalty-free illustrations for one that fits the personality of your restaurant.
5. Take the Focus off the Price
Image via Paymotion.com.
Image via Paymotion.com.
According to research, customers spend less money when there are currency symbols in prominent spots on the menu. Leave your prices in simple numbers rather than putting a dollar sign in front of them, like this example from Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen or this menu from Waldorf Astoria. Psychologically, consumers view items as costing less when the currency sign is missing.
6. Organize with Boxes
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In any document, the information can blend together if it’s not separated in a logical, organized manner. If your menu is full and looks a little convoluted, consider placing different sections in small boxes with a divider around them. For example, you can box off the appetizers, salads, main dishes, desserts, and drinks. If you serve a variety of food, you could box off the sandwiches from the burgers, or the vegetarian options on the menu. Make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for when they sit down, as they likely already know what type of food they want to order.
7. Choose the Right Typography
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It may seem like these are unimportant decisions when it comes to what type of food you are selling, but the reality is that your menu communicates much more than the food you offer. It helps set the tone of the restaurant and highlight what you want the environment to be like, and one of the most important places is through the typography. Going too fancy with the typography can make it difficult to read and make the restaurant seem fussy.
Typography can also be affected by the size of your menu and the amount of information you need to fit on one page. It may also help to use different fonts to separate sections of the menu and draw the eye of the customer to the right section. Anything you can do to simplify your menu and make it easy to decipher makes the customer happy. Many free online design tools will let you try out different type faces until you find the right one.
8. Make Their Mouths Water
While a simple hamburger sounds fine to most people, a juicy, seasoned Angus beef burger is likely to get the taste buds interested, even though the item is the same thing. Spicy tomatoes over chicken sounds intriguing, but Chicken Margarita sounds mouth-watering. Your description should get your customer passionate and excited about what they are about to eat, not feeling as if they settled for the same old thing.
One way to add excitement to your descriptions is to use local history or geography into the title. For example, everyone loves a good Maine lobster roll, whether you’re eating it in San Diego or Miami. Georgia Peach Pie and Texas Barbecued Ribs appeal to almost everyone, not just those in the area.
9. Keep It Simple
Image via Musthavemenus.com.
Elicit as much emotion and passion as you can without making it too wordy, like this example from Hank’s Diner. Your diners don’t need to know exactly how long the fish was seared, but they will want to know what spices were used to season it. That said, your servers should always be educated about how the dishes are cooked so they can answer questions.
10. Choose an Ambient Color
Color can make a huge difference in how your menu is perceived and what diners can expect from your restaurant. When choosing a color, consider the ambiance and environment you want. A quiet French bistro may use more subdued, pastel shades, while a boisterous, lively Mexican restaurant is likely to use brighter colors.
Colors can also elicit certain emotions in different individuals. Blue is often associated with trust and relaxation while red suggests excitement, action, and exuberance. Because green is often found in nature, it often brings out emotions of renewal and freshness, while yellow gives off feelings of enlightenment, optimism, and happiness. The emotions that come from your menu’s color should match the tone of your restaurant.
11. Focus on Your Logo
Image via Musthavemenus.com.
When customers leave, you want them to remember your menu and that it is associated with your brand and logo. As the captain of your brand, your logo should steer your menu design and should match colors, imagery, and fonts, like this one from Southfork Texas Tavern. Free online design tools allow you to play around with your logo and determine where it stands out the best.
12. Be Aware of the Competition
If you’re opening a new pizza joint in an area that already has quite a few, your menu can be the first step to standing out from the crowd. If you create a menu that is aesthetically pleasing and gets the stomach grumbling, you’ve done your job. Remember that when humans are hungry, they become very basic, simple creatures, and they want to know what you are going to serve them. They always want to order quickly and get their food fast, so if your menu is simple and easy to read compared to the competitors, they will flock to your establishment.
Divide It Up
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If you have too much information for one menu, don’t feel as if you must limit what you share. Many restaurants opt for more than one menu to simplify the ordering process. You may have a menu for co*cktails, a menu for main dishes and another one for dessert, and our visual marketing tools make it easy to create several menus quickly. It may also be necessary to create menus for different times of the day if you serve lunch specials that aren’t available at dinner. Here’s an example of a lunch menu and a co*cktail menu. You don’t have to put all the information in the same spot if it becomes overwhelming.
Regularly Update
If you’ve made changes to the food you offer, it’s time to update your menu. When diners believe they can order a dish that is no longer available they’re often disappointed and frustrated. Changing the menu is also important when you make changes to your prices. One way to keep this process simple is to not laminate your menus, as updating them at that point can be expensive and time-consuming.
Proofread, Proofread, Proofread
You want your customers to trust you and the food you serve. You want them to connect with you and believe that your food is the best. One of the biggest mistakes a restaurant can make is to not proofread their menu and end up with mistakes in random places. Don’t misspell the names of your food or add punctuation where it isn’t unnecessary. Even something as basic as grammar and spelling can affect how the customer feels about your restaurant. You can find several examples of how typos can make food seem unappetizing here.
Whether you’re opening a nationwide franchise or starting out as a small café in your hometown, menu design is one of the most important parts of starting your business. The restaurant industry hits close to $8 billion in saleseach year, and you want your business to be a big part of that.
Synopsis
Whether you are opening a new restaurant or just redesigning an old menu, the thought and planning you put into the spacing, color, logo and scanning pattern your customers prefer can make a huge difference in how your restaurant is perceived. If you want to turn your dreams into reality in terms of successful restaurant ownership, you can’t afford to ignore the importance of designing an easy-to-read, attractive menu.
Customers come and go for a lot of reasons, and the quality of your food is one of the most important. Alternatively, when a new diner sits down in your business, the way your menu looks can immediately draw them in. They want to know what they are ordering, what it costs and where they can easily find it. The trick is to keep the menu simple while also injecting the personality of your restaurant and your brand, and our 15 tips for menu design and free online design tools can help you do just that.
Shutterstock Editor makes it easy to create an appetizing menu by manipulating images and design elements to match the vision in your head. Use our visual marketing tools with the tips and tricks above to give your menu an edge.
Top Image by mchervan.
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