Restaurant Menu Design Tips to Maximize Profit

Oliviya Thomas
5 min readAug 3, 2021

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The menu is not just made with a list of dishes that you have in your kitchen — it describes your restaurant well. The menu is the only important thing and stands first for driving profit. People will look into the menu more than anything else because that is the one thing they need from a restaurant to order their favorites. People will judge your restaurant by seeing your menu because they are seeing at a glance how they are going to experience the taste of food. It is an internal advertising tool. It is not just a description of foods with prices — it’s a tool to attract customers’ eyes, stimulate their appetite and make them order more. Not only for the dine-in customers, an effective menu will impress the people who are ordering foods online too.

To create a restaurant website and design an online food menu, choose the best website builder who offers the best design with a great font, color, and customizable template. Go with the well-developed digital menu providers that significantly impact the potential revenue. It also should help you to design your website in a few minutes and running and ready to take your online orders.

Below are some menu design templates that you can use to make your menu that influences the customer and improves your revenue.

Eye-tracking Analysis :

A recent research has found that most of the diners are looking at the upper right corner of the menu. Hence many restaurateurs place profitable and popular dishes on that particular place in the menu, also called a sweet spot. It propels the customer to order more, thus increasing the revenue.

It has been measured by the research that many customers gazed at the top right side of the menu at first. Some of them in the food industry concluded and followed that it is a standard menu design of the restaurant. Also, it has been observed by analyzing the insights that this helps to gain the potential customers and give the profit. You can try this method to make your customers understand your menu and order more.

Clutter-free Menu :

Make your menu clear and segregate the dishes based on their section. The aesthetic design of the menu gives clear visibility and pleases the customers to order soon without confusion. Choosing a specific theme helps to solve this problem. To make your menu clutter-free, follow the theme which has a better font style, size, and color.

Avoid designing it with more creativity as it makes the menu messy and crowded. A minimalistic design attracts customers more than a menu which has more sketches. Also, be careful that the menu card which you show to your customer should be related to your restaurant. Hence, they can connect with your restaurant immediately and grab their attention.

Updated Menu :

Keep your menu updated based on the availability of the dishes you make in your restaurant. Avoid showing the food which you are planning to bring in the future. This will disappoint the customer as they may think the restaurant is empty if you say no to that dish while they order it.

Make sure that the menu is not filled with dishes that do not give the profit. Hence analyze and update your menu regularly with your profitable fast-moving dishes. This will also make you understand your customers’ expectations and help you to create new dishes. Hence analyze and attract more customers.

Menu Size :

Don’t confuse your customers while they decide what to order. Limit the order list to avoid non-moving dishes or raw foods. Eventually, create the menu with the dish which your staff can prepare quickly and easily. Your menu should be simple to make customers choose easily.

Narrow your menu with your special dishes which your competitors don’t have. Make dishes that can be prepared with the same category of ingredients to avoid wastage of raw materials. At the same time avoid the menu with the same taste and variety of dishes that make customers feel bored. Manage the menu size based on customers’ likes and dislikes. It is a simple way to fix your menu that will eventually give the benefits as profit.

Describe The Dishes:

Create a description of the dishes which is easy to understand the ingredients. Many customers are not familiar with the dishes, especially the unique dishes where they get only in your restaurant. It is fine that the name of the dishes couldn’t be kept the same which all restaurants have. But you can mention the ingredients in the description shortly at least to understand the dish by which it is made up of.

Some customers are choosy when deciding the dishes so the description helps them to order the food easily in a short time. Also, the staff can take the order easily without explaining the whole menu to the customers.

Pic of Dishes :

Some items attract customers when they look at other tables. The same strategy can be used in your menu. You can explain the dish in a single photograph. It will tempt the customers to order the food and psychologically people will be prepared to taste it.

The photos give some ideas of how the food looks and can help them understand the taste — whether it’s spicy, tangy, or plain. These kinds of pictures will save time. So if you are mentioning foods with the photos keep in mind that you should use only high-quality pictures. But the truth is not all customers will be attracted to the pictures. It varies depending on the people.

Choose Colors :

Create a menu with attractive colors based on your restaurant theme and your audience. It helps to draw the attention of customers and they can set the mood with your restaurant. People will react to different colors based on their moods. For example, avoiding red makes the customers order high-margin items, orange makes them feel hungry and they will order more. Similarly, different colors have unique ways to attract customers’ eyes.

While designing a menu, considering the color of the menu is important as it plays a vital role in grabbing the attention of customers. It makes customers feel your restaurant ambiance and comfort them to enjoy the food.

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