Best 7 Essential Restaurant Menu Design Tips

You want to bring to the table a restaurant menu that is more than just sheets of paper. You want to breathe life into it, let it express your star dishes and your restaurant’s personality. However, you are unsure and there is information shot at you from everywhere. Don’t worry, you have stopped at the right place. This article has been carefully written to bring the best design tips so that you can create an interactive and customer-friendly menu that showcases your restaurant’s fine standards.

Designing a restaurant menu is honestly not a piece of cake; however, it is the gold mine of food and beverages a restaurant offers. A menu is almost always the first thing a diner interacts with, hence, ensuring it fulfills the criteria and maintains the top restaurant menu design company standard is of utmost importance. If a menu is poorly worded and designed, customers may perceive your restaurant in a negative light, therefore, placing the food and services you offer in a tight spot. Whereas, a thoughtfully designed menu with well-written words and appealing pictures can enhance your brand image and instantly make diners satisfied with their choice of restaurant.

Here are seven best tips for you to take your restaurant menu to new heights.

Leave White Spaces

Our eyes hate clutter be it at home or on the restaurant menu. Restrict yourself from the urge to bombard the menu pages with the delicious items you provide. Studies have shown that having white spaces enhances the reader’s ability to comprehend information by up to 30 percent. Therefore, if you want the items and descriptions in your menu to stand out, integrate a solid amount of white space. In addition, include white spaces around each section to enable better navigation and processing of information in the menu.

A Good Design & Style Carries Weight

Design elements possess the power to transform your menu from ordinary to extraordinary in no time. Apply various design features such as boxes, lines, colors, or illustrations to draw attention to the best-selling and popular items of the restaurant. Take time to think about your typography because apart from the waiter, this feature communicates to the diners too about the restaurant. Typography, in simple terms, is the style and visual appearance of the matter. Styling using effective typography will present the information more legibly and using more than one typeface will ensure customers can clearly differentiate the item names and descriptions provided.

It’s All About Language

Words like ‘buttery’, ‘caramelized’, ‘cheesy’ flood our senses with rich imagery and sensation while arousing hunger. Incorporating these adjectives to describe your items can cook up an image of the appearance and taste of the dish, as a result, it increases the probability of your customers ordering the item. An experiment carried out at Cornell University revealed that descriptive menu labels increase sales of a dish by 27 percent. Furthermore, customers are more likely to be satisfied with their meal and hence, provide more positive customer feedback. So, think of your food as something alive and use your menu as a medium to describe its texture, color, size, and shape. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to contain complex language, just simple, easy-to-follow language seasoned with rich adjectives.

Speak Through Pictures

Adding vibrant pictures alongside the food items can increase its sale by 30 percent so don’t hesitate to speak about your mouth-watering food through photos. Sometimes, pictures can be exciting to customers who haven’t tried out the item and might be encouraged to taste something new. Moreover, some customers may be reluctant to order a dish if they are unaware of what it looks like so help their decision-making choices with pictures. On an important note, ensure that the photos added are of high quality because the diner first feasts with their eyes before tasting the dishes.

Let Everything Flow

As human beings, our brain is hardwired with certain logical and sequential information that we pick up from our environment. It is important to divide the menu into logical sections and this can be accomplished by arranging dishes sequentially in their appropriate groups, starting with the appetizers. If the information does not follow the standard format of ‘appetizers/ starters, main course, and dessert, it can appear confusing to the diners. If you are confident about trying out a different format with other features like regional dishes, ensure it is clearly labeled so the customers don’t encounter any challenges trying to find what they want.

Say “No” to Currency Signs

Studies reveal that diners have a higher probability of spending more money when currency signs are excluded from the menu. So, don’t emphasize currency and make it evident to them how much they are spending. In addition, customers may greatly focus on the price of the dish rather than the item itself. It is highly advisable to allow the dish’s cost to blend in and not make a statement. The sole purpose of the price is to merely inform them so, omit the currency signs and shine the spotlight on the dishes your offer.

Spice Up with Colours

Yes, the colors you use in your menu influence the perceptions and attitudes the diners hold regarding the brand image. Incorporate colors that align with the targeted customers and the restaurant’s theme. For instance, if you serve seafood, it is highly suggested to use various shades of blue because people often associate blue with the ocean so they are likely to remember this dining experience. Colors also express the restaurant’s personality therefore, select colors that are lively, warm, and cheerful because they can paint a positive image in the diner’s mind. Lastly, think about your own experience with colors and dining. What colors did your favorite restaurant use?

Don’t be frightened to explore different menu styles and designs, you will find one that perfectly suits your restaurant. Simply consider your restaurant as an individual with a rich personality and character and let your menu speak for it.