Last Updated on: 21st March 2024, 09:21 am
Marketing Guides
One significant part of a customer’s ‘dine-out experience is looking at the menu to decide what to order. The pictures, text, and prices all affect a customer’s subconscious “desire” for your food choices. That’s why conceiving efficient and creative menu design ideas provide your customers with a fulfilling dining experience at your restaurant.
Here are the 2 best creative menu design ideas you can implement to create the best-suited menu for your local restaurant.
Creative Menu Design Ideas #1. Create a List of Food and Beverages
Prepare a spreadsheet with all your food items and beverages with their prices. To be efficient, categorize your menu based on the types of dishes you’re serving. Here are sample categories:
- Breakfast
- Appetizers
- Salads
- Soups
- Main Course
- Dessert
- Beverages
Your set of categories also depends on the kind of restaurant (e.g. Italian, American, Vegan). This simple, comprehensive list will be your basis for designing your menu.
Creative Menu Design Ideas #2. Narrow Down on a Balanced Layout
Aim for a menu with a balanced layout. It should have the right amount of text and imagery on all sides. This helps customers navigate through your menu without any difficulty.
An ideal layout is well-spaced, consistent, and avoids clutter. Here’s how you can go about it.
1. Based on your food items, decide if your menu will be one-sided, or if it’s going to be two-fold. However, you don’t need to stick to the conventional menu layout. The more creative you get, the better your menu is. Just make sure there’s a consistent layout—not a cluttered one.
2. Pick a font style that matches the theme or branding of your restaurant. Don’t settle for too common font types like Helvetica or Times New Roman if you’ve got a bright, fun-themed restaurant. For inspiration, check Creative Bloq’s good guide on restaurant menu font styles.
3. Choose your color scheme. Your colors must resonate with your restaurant’s overall theme, including your decor, upholstery, staff uniforms, etc. At the same time, it’s best to use colors that induce an appetite like green, yellow and red. You can learn more about color psychology here.
4. If you can’t put an image for ALL your food choices, provide images of at least of your signature dishes. Get a professional photographer to take mouth-watering pictures. Just make sure to add only enough photos to avoid clutter and obstruction with the texts and colors on your menu.
There you have it!
Just a note: It’s best to design different restaurant menus for dine-in customers and take-out customers. It’s part of your marketing to hand out menus as well.
Simply Be Found Launched Features Perfect For Restaurants
While printed menus are a great way to showcase your products, restaurants also need digital menus because they are more efficient and can provide a better customer experience. A digital menu can be customized to the customer’s preferences, allowing them to find what they are looking for easily. They can also be updated quickly to reflect the latest specials or changes in the menu. This makes it easier for the restaurant staff to manage and update the menu, saving time and money.
Simply Be Found’s Restaurant Menu tool is best for restaurants to create your menu, share it to their website, and publish it directly to Google Business Profile simply all from one place. You can easily Upload images, create categories, and add prices. Having a menu on your website increases the chance that potential customers will view your menu and decide to visit your restaurant.
You can basically create your menu design with multiple resources online. You can use Canva’s menu designer using their templates. When you print out your menus, make sure they are high quality. You can refer to Superflex’s Menu Design to learn more about this.
