7 Restaurant Menu Design Tips

Often before a server or cashier and always before your meal, your restaurant’s menu is one of the first things your customers will see. Making a great first impression with your menu is so essential.

A menu that is overly full, poorly written, poorly photographed, or has an odd design will make a diner’s experience less enjoyable, and your cuisine and service will have to compensate. A well-written, attractive menu that complements your brand will immediately give your customers the impression that they have chosen the correct restaurant.

By highlighting lucrative menu items and creating a lasting impression on customers, a well-designed restaurant menu printing can also have a significant effect on income. Although it’s easy to concentrate solely on aesthetics, a menu makeover is far more successful if you’ve considered the profitability and appeal of your menu items. Utilise that information to your benefit when creating your menu by highlighting your best-selling goods.

Menu Design Tips to Follow

1. Take into Account Eye Movement Patterns

The Golden Triangle, as some restaurant menu printing experts name it, states that when we read a menu, our eyes usually begin in the centre of the page, then migrate to the top right, and finally to the top left. Some claim that the top right corner or the top of the page will be the first thing people see.

However, a San Francisco State study claims that customers read menus like a book, beginning at the top left, and a Korean study published in the Journal of Global Business and Technology claims that a third of your diners are more likely to order the first item they see. 

2. Make Good Use of White Space

Clutter irritates the human eye. Research indicates that the proper use of white space can increase reader comprehension by as much as 30%. Make sure your restaurant menu printing has a good quantity of white space if you want your menu items and descriptions to stand out.

Advice: To enhance appearance and prevent the visitor from feeling overloaded, leave some space.

Audrey does a fantastic job with this at the Hammer in Los Angeles. The restaurant’s name is creatively highlighted in all four corners of the menu, and the white space surrounding each part aids the reader in processing the information and selecting the ideal food.

3. For Visual Guidance, Use Boxes and Colour

Emphasise any menu items that are significant or, better yet, that you know will be profitable! Using design features that direct attention to the proper areas, guide your customers through your menu.

Hiring an artist or graphic designer to develop your menu is a terrific way to ensure that diners remember your brand. A skilled menu designer can also assist you in creating a menu that aligns with any menu engineering data you may have. They can utilise colour, lines, and pictures to highlight your Puzzles (high profit, low popularity) and Star menu items (high profit, high popularity).

Advice: Look for a graphic designer or artist who can assist you in building your brand and differentiating your menu. Also, ensure reliance on professional restaurant menu printing.

4. Lessen the Choice Burden

There is a balance between having too few and too many menu options for restaurant menu printing. The decision of where to eat has already overwhelmed diners. Don’t force them to choose from hundreds of selections after they’ve decided on your establishment.

To help your guests make a decision, it’s also crucial to remember that each item on your menu should be distinct. Having two distinct steak dishes could give the impression that there is plenty, but in reality, it merely makes it more difficult for your guests to make a decision and puts the two meals in competition with one another.

Having an extremely lengthy menu can also harm sales because it slows down table turnover, which means your front-of-house workers will serve fewer customers in a shift. A shorter menu can result in better execution of each item and is much easier to manage for back-of-house operations as well.

Advice: Make sure your menu is well-chosen and brief.

6. Make Use of Word Power

To convey the flavour of a dish, use the descriptions of the menu items. Words that evoke a visceral sense of hunger include “crisp,” “buttery,” and “savoury.” To communicate the character of the restaurant and the effort you put into each dish, use descriptions.

According to a Cornell University experiment led by Dr Brian Wansink, informative menu labelling or banner printing in Melbourne boosts an item’s sales by 27% and makes customers happier with their meals. More positive customer reviews followed (as long as the product lived up to the beautiful description).

Advice: One piece of advice is to write your menu description in very detailed terms.

7. Think About Using Pictures

Gregg Rapp, a renowned menu engineer, discovered that a food item’s sales increase by 30% when a beautiful image accompanies it. Keep in mind that you can write your restaurant’s Instagram handle on the menu or banner printing in Melbourne with a call-out like “Check out our Instagram if you want to preview any of our dishes” if you don’t want to utilise images on your menu, mainly because printing them can be very costly. For convenience, you can even include a bit.ly link or QR code. 

Advice: Use high-quality images of high-profit items to draw customers in, especially when designing digital menu boards. The same is true for your online ordering page (more on that below).

Conclusion

One element of a good restaurant strategy is clever menu design: Make sure your menu showcases your best-selling dishes and represents your cooking and style. Get in touch with our staff at Bloom Graphics if you need some assistance getting started with your menu makeover, and we’ll help you create the greatest menu possible.