Excellent restaurant menu designs can improve the dining experience, assist customers in making satisfying choices, and stimulate appetite. A menu, on the other hand, is more than just a list of the dishes available at a restaurant; it is an advertising tool capable of communicating a restaurant’s identity and driving profit – if it is well designed.
In this article, we will go over several visual menu design strategies that can help your restaurant clients increase their profit margins. Be warned: you may leave hungry.
1. Recognize Eye Scanning Patterns
For years, restaurants have designed their menus with the assumption that customers’ eyes are naturally drawn to the “sweet spot” in the upper-righthand corner, where they place their higher-profit items.
According to new research, customers read menus like books, beginning in the top left corner.
2. Separate the Menu Into Logical Sections.
Make it simple for customers to find dishes by organizing them sequentially and logically, beginning with the appetizers.
3. Use Photos Sparingly
Photos of food are more commonly associated with junk mail fliers and big chain restaurants like Denny’s; not high-end restaurants.
If you do use photos, they must be of extremely high professional quality, which may be costly.
In general, it’s better to leave the quality of the food to the customer’s imagination, because not all food photography will appeal to everyone.
4. Consider using illustration
Instead of photography, try using illustrations – they are more likely to be universally appealing and can help communicate the restaurant’s personality.
5. Don’t emphasize currency signs
Don’t make customers overly aware of how much they’re spending. Studies have shown that customers are more likely to spend more when currency signs are omitted.
6. Consider using boxes
Boxes draw attention to a group of menu items and are often used by restaurants to promote dishes with the highest profit margins, like pasta and other carb-based items.
7. Typography
Effective typography will communicate a restaurant’s brand and result in a legible menu. The selection of typeface may depend on a number of practical factors, such as the amount of text needed to comfortably fit on the page.
Using more than one typeface – say, to distinguish the names and descriptions of menu items – may help to guide customers through the menu.
8. Choose appropriate colors
Select colors based on your target audience and the theme of the restaurant. Different colors have different psychological effects on a viewer, so your color scheme will help to set the mood of a restaurant as well as draws attention to certain food items.
Maudie’s Tex Mex Restaurant menu design is a fresh take on the warm color scheme that is usually associated with Mexican cuisine
Conclusion
If you’re not familiar with Graphics and Designing for creating menus, you can check out some online menu design tools and also try free mobile apps like menu maker, and free menu design.
Also if you’re using the old-style menu which comes in excel and want to convert that into the modern menu then use online tools like excel to pdf then put attractive images in the background and boom !!! your old and gold menu will be ready in a few clicks.
This idea will surely help you to create the best menu which can grab the attention of your customers.
