Menu design can make or break restaurants. Just like the food, the service, the interior design and the sign out front.
The menu is the restaurant’s (and café’s) most important marketing tool. Why? Because everyone who comes in must look at it. You simply have to look at the menu to order your food. The question is: what do your guests feel once they’ve opened the menu? As restauranteurs, the answer is up to you. Ask yourself: what do you want them to see? What do you want them to feel?
Menu marketing is a science. It has been studied for over four decades by marketing departments in universities all over the world. What we can confidently say is that menu design profoundly impacts restaurant success. We will try to explain why.
First of all, let’s start with the obvious. A restaurant must invest in unified messaging. It’s all about the flow. The consumer promise expressed in the front sign, the interior design, the food styling and the service must be maintained in the menu. As soon as a customer sees an unattractive menu, or a menu that breaks with the restaurant’s unified messaging, a dissonance is created. As restauranteurs, you don’t want your customers to feel uneasy, even on subconscious levels. You want them to feel great, especially right before they choose what to order and how much money they want to spend.
Why is menu design so important?
Restaurant guests don’t really read menus. They experience menus. They open them, leaf through them, and close them after one- or two-minutes tops. There’s not a lot of patience involved. They don’t want to read, they want to eat and have a good time. They crave a great experience.
A well-designed menu delivers a good experience. Menus that are too long, too big and too detailed will not get the job done. Menus that are not properly designed tend to confuse and frustrate. As a result, less food is ordered.
What are the basics of smart menu design?
Great question. Let’s start with the simplicities. Spacing between menu items. Borders between different dish categories. Smart coloring. Font type and size suited for fast (and hungry) reading. Menu size. These are all very important parameters that restaurants must take into consideration when designing the menu. In addition, menu design must be suited to the restaurant’s target audience.
A few advanced tips
The menu is a sales tool. In fact, you can look at a menu as a salesperson (with no disrespect to waiters, who are very influential and important). Therefore, the order of the dish items on the menu is very important. So is font and color. A change in font for a specific dish category can really make a difference. Color is stimulation, so smart use of color for a specific dish or category can help generate attention.
Item price directly impacts item menu placement. There’s an entire science to where to place the expensive dishes and where to place the items that cost less.
We recommend thinking about creating borders between the different dish categories, with an emphasis on the dishes you want your diners to order. An emphasis can be placed on cocktails, soups, the house specialty, or anything else. The most important thing is to know that your menu helps direct your guests to the experience you want them to have. Everything must be perfect, including the menus size, paper type and restaurant lighting. If you follow the rules, you may experience a significant rise in profit. It’s a science.
We are Baram Studio
Baram Studio has been designing restaurants and cafes since 1996, with an emphasis on menu design, interior design, logo design and more. Limor Baram, the studio’s owner, lives and breathes the restaurant business. Her husband, David Baram, is a seasoned chef and restaurateur with over twenty years of experience.
Remember: a well-designed menu can help you increase your restaurant’s sales. We speak from personal experience, as well as the experience of our clients. Breakfast menus, business menus, dinner menus or take away & delivery menus – it really doesn’t matter: use this important marketing platform to your advantage. Because every small menu has great influence.
Want to design your great menu? Get in touch with Limor at (972)-9-7744802 or [email protected] We’ll be happy to meet with you!
