What should a restaurant menu include

When applied to menu development, this methodology dictates that you should start with a small amount of menu items. Once you start selling and acquiring customer feedback, you can then make additions. Most menus are built to accommodate the standard paper sizes of 8. To feature dishes, use table tents, menu boards, or chalk boards. Menu engineers suggest that each menu category should have no more than seven items: seven appetizers, seven mains, seven desserts, seven cocktails, etc.

While old menu strategies tried to include something for everyone, new menu best practices follow a less-is-more philosophy. The selection process for diners is easier when they have less to choose from.

Bonus: fewer menu items is easier on food costs, kitchen prep and makes for faster service. Find out what they are in our section on menu engineering. This practice is also known as framing. To align with menu engineering best practices, place the dishes you want to be best known for or dishes with high profit margins in these boxes, like pasta or rice-bowls. The more call-out boxes you have, the less effective they will be. The following elements of a restaurant menu design have a dual function.

If your brand is tongue-in-cheek, then item titles, descriptions and look and feel should be too. Likewise, if your brand is elegant, then those same elements should be more formal in nature. The name sets up the experience of that dish in the mind of diners. Experiment with different naming strategies and keep in mind the larger design format. Keep menu item descriptions to the point. If you choose to add to your description, be brief.

Like call-out boxes, photos are an eye-magnet. Many diners and chefs alike associate photos with low-end or cheap restaurants, although they are sometimes used by chains and family-style restaurants.

Not all photos appeal to everyone. If you do use photos, use professional photos and do so sparingly by limiting the photos to one per panel.

In place of photos, consider using illustrations. They also help readers group visual information. For example: If you use the color red to list menu categories, when the reader sees red, they will understand that section is apart of a specific menu category. If you use blue call-out boxes and blue font for specialty dishes, when the reader sees blue, they will understand that this is separate or important from the rest of the menu.

Color and brand: Color reinforces the brand and mood of your restaurant. If you use color, consult your target market on colors that appeal to them and stick to your theme. Color theory: Based on evolution, humans have been conditioned to associate certain colors with consumption. Certain colors can actually stimulate appetite. Adjust the shade of color: An easy way to draw attention without adding too many colors into the mix is to adjust the shade of a single color.

This is also known as dot-matrix screening. For example, if you choose to write your menu items in bold black, you could adjust the descriptions to grey so that the black titles stand out prominently. Another design tactic, another eye magnet. Similarly to color, use font to embody the theme and concept of your restaurant.

Font and readability: Make sure that your font is easy to read. The smallest size you should use is points. Great restaurant menu designs can enhance a dining experience, help customers makes satisfying choices and stimulate appetite. Here, we discuss several visual strategies in menu design that can help increase profit margins for your restaurant clients.

Forewarned: you might leave hungry. However, new research suggests that customers tend to read menus like a book, starting in the top left corner. Make it easy for customers to search for dishes by arranging items sequentially and in logical groups, starting with the appetizers.

If you do use photos, they must be of extremely high professional quality, which may be costly. Studies have shown that customers are more likely to spend more when currency signs are omitted. Boxes draw attention to a group of menu items, and are often used by restaurant to promote dishes with the highest profit margins, like pasta and other carb-based items. 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. 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.

The cycle menu definition is fairly intuitive given its name. Think of a sandwich shop that offers a certain sandwich on Monday.

Then another sandwich on Tuesday. And so on for the rest of the week. Cycle menus are often used for two reasons. The second is for daily specials, like a happy hour menu. A bar or restaurant may have a static menu that anchors their offerings, but a cycle menu on top of it. That cycle menu showcases the same collection of special offers on the same days throughout the week. They typically provide the best customer experience because of the amount of options they provide, their consistency, and their easy navigation.

It's customer satisfaction in restaurant industry But the fact that static menus are large makes that consistent experience full of possibility. A static menu typically presents everything a bar or restaurant offers. Depending on whatever restaurant technology is being employed, it can be on digital display boards, or paper menus. You can even leverage a restaurant menu bar code.

It may contain some a la carte ordering options, some meal options, some du jour options, and some cyclical options. And, as we mentioned, food and beverage in a static menu are usually categorized into different groups. For food this may be appetizers, salads, entrees, etc. For drinks it may be shots, cocktails, beer, and wine. This makes static menus particularly easy to navigate. A fixed menu is a menu with few options and a fixed total price. It can be confused with static menus because the words, outside of the context of menu names, are similar.

But the fixed menu definition is far different from that of the static menu. A fixed menu is also commonly called a set menu, and there are two common types. The fact that there are few options and a set total price make it a fixed menu, but with some variability.

A prix fixe menu is a fixed menu with little to no variability for a fixed total price. It typically includes an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. While guests can usually modify these based on dietary restrictions or preferences, there is only one option to choose from per course.