The most important thing to think about when choosing the style for your restaurant menu is to make sure that it reflects your business as well as appeals to customers — a lot easier said than done. Below are some tips and advice on what to do when styling your restaurant menu.
You can roughly group menu styles into 4 categories:
Upscale
This style of restaurant menu tends to be short and to the points. You won’t find many images on it, if at all, and they tend to use details and stylish fonts
Child Friendly
These types of menu have tons of pictures and bright colors in order to keep the kids occupied. Best to use large fonts for these types of menus to make sure that they are easily readable.
Modern
The styles of modern restaurant menus tend to be broad and mostly reliant on the restaurant’s theme. However, like the upscale menus, they also use stylish fonts and designs.
Nostalgic
Making your patrons think about a time long past can really help sell your food. These styles of restaurant menus have an old fashioned/rustic feel to them as well as numerous images. If you are catering your menu to an older demographic, you should think about making the fonts larger and easier to read.
How To Style Your Restaurant Menu
There is no single one element that goes into styling your restaurant menu. You must take into account elements such as fonts, colors, images, text etc. By focusing on these elements, you can help give your restaurant menu some character. Also, your menu design is what is going to persuade your customers to buy specific items, so making sure each one of the elements are on point is crucial.
Food Descriptions
Menu food item descriptions let customers know what they are getting. Writing food item descriptions that get people salivating is also important. With menu descriptions you can convey a lot of information including food allergies, or special diets. It can also help your customers find a dish that they want to try– For example, if your restaurant sells ethnic dishes with unique names, your food descriptions will let customer know what it is.
Besides providing the ingredients in the dish, its best to describe the taste of the food — even texture. This will give people more information about the dish so they can make the right choice.
A good example of this would be a salad. Instead of writing your salad description as “Spinach, Romaine, feta cheese and almonds with a house vinaigrette,” switch it up to something like this:
“Fresh Spinach, crispy romaine lettuce surrounded by feta cheese, slivered almonds topped with a fresh house vinaigrette”
Which one would you like to eat?
Using Images in Your Menu
Using images on your menu is one of those tricky things that can go either way. On one hand, using images is a great way to give your patrons an idea of what to expect when they order your dishes, on the other hand, having too many images, or not quality ones, will give customers the idea that your restaurant serves low quality/cost food.
Below are some tips on how to use images to style your restaurant menu.
Use High quality images if available — Images that don’t look good (such as grainy or out of focus) make your restaurant look unprofessional and give customers the wrong idea about your business. If you need high quality images, you may want to look into hiring a photographer to take images of your menu items.
2 or less images/page — Try to keep your images to 2 per page. If your restaurant is more kid-friendly, then using more is better.
Images for best Menu Items — Since it’s best to have a limited amount of pictures on your menu, make sure you use images of your restaurant’s popular dishes or high priced items. It will definitely make your customers more interested in your food offerings.
Need some fresh images? — If you are updating your menu images, instead of using what you have or what a photographer took, check out Facebook or Instagram posts relating to your restaurant. Maybe customers have posted images of your food that put them in a different light. And of course, if you do use an image from another person’s social profile, make sure you have permission beforehand.
By following these tips and advice, you will be fast on your way to creating a style for your restaurant’s menu.
Restaurant Menu Font/Typography Style
A lot of times, restaurant owners overlook the menu font type when styling their restaurant menu, but choosing the right font goes a long way in helping you generate sales from your customers. A few tips here include:
Making you foo item titles bigger than prices — you don’ want people to focus on the price of your food, you want them to buy it. By making the price font smaller than title, you are helping direct the customer’s eyes to where you want it to be on the menu.
Text Capitalization — Using all uppercase, lowercase, bolded letters for your menu items titles can really work well to make your dishes stand out, but for the actual description of the menu item, it is best to use proper punctuation and regular roman, non italic or scripty fonts.
Font Size — Depending on your restaurant’s demographics, you may want to increase the font size of your menu items in order to make them easier to read. Category headings at least 24pt. Food item titles at 16pt while descriptions should be at 12 to 14 pt
These are a few tips and tricks to really help make your menu 100% unique. If you want more help in designing your restaurant menu or need help printing it, – contact tom[a]menustore.com or call 1 800-815-5342