The menu can rightfully be called an important component of an upscale lunch. This is not just a list of food and drink. This is the face of the restaurant, because first we “eat” with our eyes, and only then we taste the dishes. The more beautiful and attractive the menu, the better impression the visitor will have. And if the level of service and the talent of the chef cannot be corrected by designers, then creating a stunning menu is completely within their competence.
We invite you to look at 15 impressive examples of menus made in different styles. Perhaps you will find inspiration here and create your own masterpiece!
06. L'Encant
The menu of the L'Encant sushi bar in Spain was developed by the design agency Nuria Vila. The blending of Spanish and Japanese culture has resulted in menus made using non-standard materials: wood cover and stone paper inside.
07. Fade St. Social
You can convey the national character and mood of the establishment through the menu, if you decorate it with illustrations, as is the case with this bar in Dublin. Illustrator Steve Simpson has created funny and colorful drawings that bring out the mood of the bar.
08 Mr. Brown
The menu can be not only part of the identity, but also part of the interior of the restaurant, as is the case with this Mexican restaurant.
09.Smith
If there is a need to frequently change the menu of a restaurant, you should not make it expensive, because in the end it can be very costly. The club restaurant in downtown Toronto offers an interesting menu in the form of a large newspaper with black and white illustrations and large, easy-to-read text. It was created with illustrator Tracy Ma, who made it stylish and affordable, allowing it to be changed every season.
10 Eleven Madison Park
This sleek, minimalist menu originated in New York's Eleven Madison Park restaurant. Designed by Juliette Cezzar, it offers 28 ingredients, from which the customer can create 16 dishes of their choice.
11 Fat Cow
A restaurant in Singapore that specializes in beef and uses the Japanese method of preparation and serving. Inspired by the Japanese “Wabi Sabi” aesthetic, creative agency Foreign Policy has come up with a special wooden stand to serve the menu.
12. Cafe Kafka
Cafe in Barcelona with Mediterranean cuisine is notable for its menu. Antique-styled illustrations and an interesting layout make a pleasant impression and clearly demonstrate the rich history of the institution and its vintage character.
13 Maddigan's Freehouse
The traditional London pub Maddigan boasts a significant number of patrons. So when the question arose of updating the style, designer Aaron Kitney was tasked with not scaring off old customers and attracting new ones. This is how this attractive conservative design was born.
14.Aroma
When content leads form. This is exactly what happened in the case of the Aroma restaurant in Barcelona. Designer Eren Saracevic used a minimalist style to describe each item on the menu. And as support for the main idea, the designer placed an illustration of the nose on the cover of the menu.
15. Wives
This cocktail menu is one of the most remarkable. Following the concept of Singapore's 13 Wives, each drink is the story of one fictional woman, which is told in this little black book. This is another creative from the Foreign Policy studio.
Sourced from creativebloq.com
Guests make their choice quickly, but usually the order is not very large, which leads to a low bill. Why? Because a one-page menu does not give you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the gastronomic world of the institution and does not arouse the desire to try something new. This menu is associated with something ordinary. Suitable for coffee houses and some family restaurants that change their menu frequently.
- Double page menu
The structure that best suits the menu. This format is easy to read and immerses the guest in the gastronomic world of the institution. It makes it possible to see all menu items at once and facilitates the decision-making process. Suitable for all categories of restaurants: from coffee shops to the premium segment.
- Three page menu
A three-page menu is a reasonable choice if you offer many items and need more space. However, remember that the two-page version is easier to read.
- Multi-page menu
The more pages in your menu, the less you can influence the choice of the guest. This structure should be avoided. A great way to offer guests more items is with special offers and seasonal menus.
HOW TO ORGANIZE ITEMS IN THE MENU?
There are two main answers to this question, and they are mutually exclusive. directions on how to arrange items on the menu.
The first school proposes to arrange the positions in such a way that the guest follows the traditional sequence of dishes. This means that appetizers are placed before the main course and the subsequent dessert.
The second school believes that guests do not "read" the menu from beginning to end. Instead, they skim through it. Therefore, if you want to highlight certain menu items, then you need to position them where the guest looks first. These areas are called focus points and they vary depending on the menu structure.
- In a one-page menu, the main focus point is in the middle of the page. The guest focuses first here, then moves to the bottom of the page, and finally to the top.
- In a menu consisting of two pages, the main focus is located in the upper right part of the right sheet.
- In a three-page menu, the main focus is in the center of the menu. Further, the sequence is as follows: upper right corner; upper left corner; lower left corner; back to the top right corner; bottom right corner and finally back to the center of the menu.
- Place profitable positions in the menu on the right to focus the attention of the guest on them. This method will help increase the check and lead to greater profits.
DO NOT FOCUS ON THE PRICE COLUMN
A common mistake when compiling a menu is placing the list of prices in a column on the right side of the menu opposite the positions.
Instead, write the price below the description of the dish, leaving two lines between them. Use the same font style and size for both description and price. An alternative option is to place the name of the dish and its description in the center, and place the price below them in the center.
BRIGHT ELEMENTS
Bright elements such as various colored sections, icons, frames. Use them to draw the guest's attention to the dishes that bring you the most profit. Only here you should not get carried away so as not to turn your menu into solid squares, frames and colored inserts. In this case, the guest will simply choose the dish that he knows and has tried many times, and will not decide on a gastronomic experiment in your restaurant.
HOW TO DESCRIPTION DISHES?
Don't just list the ingredients. Write words that evoke emotions that arouse interest in the dish. Perhaps you want to tell your guests why you included this dish on the menu. Maybe this is a family recipe that was inherited from your grandmother, or is it your favorite dessert since childhood? Make the description more personal and emotional so that the guest ordered not just a dish, but became part of the story and could tell friends and family about it.
This article will talk about what menus are in restaurants. It will help you get the right idea about the menu development process, avoid possible mistakes and unnecessary costs, and get not what you get, but what you would like.
Menu- a key detail of any restaurant. After all, sales and the impression of the restaurant depend on how the menu looks. The menu is part of the image. The menu is responsible for arousing the client's appetite and arousing in him the desire to order a dish. Now there are different trends in restaurant menu design. Let's break them down into two broad categories to start with. Menus are textual, without photos and menus with photos of dishes, all or selective. The design of both can look good and stylish. But only the design of the menu with photos will cause the client's appetite. Of course, with the menu with photos, you will have to tinker longer, but the result will not be long in coming if everything is done correctly.
If we decide to make a menu with photos, then the first thing we need to do is find a photographer. First we need a photographer and a designer. Or a design studio with a staff photographer. Also, there are companies that specialize only in serving restaurants. All have their pros and cons. This topic will be covered in the article "Designer or design studio? Whom to work with?" Most often, photographers work on their own. Therefore, in this article we will consider working with a photographer and a designer.
You can contact any generalist photographer. But it’s best to immediately find a photographer whose portfolio includes shooting dishes for a restaurant. Such photographers are called food photographers. Why is a food photographer better? Photographing food has its own characteristics, just like any genre. Here it is important to have the appropriate technique, equipment, it is important to know the organization of the process so as not to waste the customer’s extra time, to have the appropriate props, to be able to retouch food shooting, to be able to beautifully serve dishes for shooting.
The spread of the cost of food photography services is very large. Many make money on this only for the originality of services. How to choose the right food photographer can be found in the article: "Food photographer services and the cost of services"
When a food photographer is found, we order photography of dishes for the restaurant. A good food photographer will not promise to shoot all the dishes in 3-5 hours. A good shoot of an average restaurant menu takes at least 2 days of 5-7 hours. Next, you need to have necessary products for shooting. In addition to the ingredients for your dishes, you may need accompanying products that will decorate the menu in the frame. To do this, it is better to consult with a photographer or designer in advance. The chef prepares the dishes, the food photographer photographs them, and the waiters get the opportunity to eat to satiety.
Advice: Not bad to feed the photographer, because he is on his feet all day and tries for you. He has no time to go to eat, as he does not want to waste your time. He will be grateful to you, and this will reflect well on his work.
Advice: Food styling and food photography for menus require a high degree of concentration. A food stylist is often responsible for a complex composition. But food photographers also work very hard. In addition to the aesthetic part, it should also have a technical one in order. After 3-4 hours of work, perception often becomes dull. The optimal number of work without a break is no more than 4 hours. Then you should take a break. It is necessary to "refresh" the view. It's like if you inhale a lot of aromas one by one, you soon stop distinguishing them. There is also an optimal number of hours of the working day, it is 5-6 hours. If time permits, then it is better to break the shooting into 2 days or 5 hours than to suffer all 10 hours at once. In this case, the first recent photos may clearly be inferior in quality to the first ones.
The shooting is over and you are waiting for the photo.
Advice: How long to wait for a photo is better to discuss with the photographer in advance. For all photographers, this can take a different time from a week to a month. It should be taken into account that the food photographer has his own real queue. This point can be clarified in advance. But planning ahead is not realistic.
Sooner or later you get them :) They look good, but in magazines they are much more appetizing, brighter and juicier. What's the matter? It's about the final retouch. A food photographer does batch processing of his photos, but he does not do the final retouching. To do this, you need either a retoucher or a designer. Here, too, there are nuances: it is one thing to remove garbage in the frame, but it is quite another to remove product defects: tears and cracks, raw meat in a cutlet, etc. Such retouching is an additional work of the retoucher.
Most design studios and designers work on a prepaid basis. On the one hand, you should not be afraid of this. Menu design is a product that is weakly protected by copyright and requires a safety net. On the other hand, of course, you need to be vigilant.
Possible error: Some firms may agree to work without prepayment. But surprisingly, they often just disappear with your order! The answer is simple - they simply give preference to customers who have made an advance payment. A professional designer is simply reluctant to take on an order without prepayment.
Development of menu design for a turnkey restaurant and photo session: Menufoto team.
Photographer
Restaurants that invest heavily in their menus perform better than those that don't. Menu design is vital to persuading customers to order certain items. He makes them come back to try what they couldn't try the first time. Choosing the right menu templates can make a big difference to a restaurant's sales.
Menu design is not just something you sketched out there! This is based on the strategic placement of items, dishes that you want to sell more (or are already selling well) are displayed prominently.
You need to plan the menu in advance, before sending it to print. For example, look at the movement of your visitors' eyes, try making (or removing) the dollar signs on the menu smaller.
Proper menu design is very important. There is a difference between confused customers with random sales and customers who order dishes that are prominently displayed.
Envato Market gives you all the restaurant menu template designs you could want for your small restaurant.
The best restaurant menu templates available for sale on Envato Market (GraphicRiver).At the same time, designers and marketers who want to get more customers from a small restaurant offer a huge selection of menu templates to choose from as well. Browse inspirational designs below.
Creative menu templates for a restaurant
Here are twenty restaurant menu templates with beautiful designs and professional features. They come in several ready-to-print flexible designs.
1. Food Menu Template Bundle
This modern, clean and visually appealing menu template is good for restaurants of all shapes and cuisines. Its minimalistic, column-friendly design allows your visitors to quickly and easily select the menu options they want.
Use it for small restaurants of all types, from steakhouses and bars to cafes and canteens. It has full-layered and organized files that won't cause any hassle with menus, so you can have peace of mind showing off the best dishes to your customers.
2.
This precise, modern and elegant menu design is ideal for restaurant use. It has a minimalistic black and white layout and nice spacing between letters, so the font will be readable for your visitors.
It's easy to highlight your small restaurant's most luxurious dishes with its clean layout and thoughtful design. With included Photoshop PSD files and interchangeable images for greater customization, this template is letter-sized for added convenience.
3. Cafe Menu Flyer + Business Card
With a soothing color scheme that is easy on the eyes and color contrast to highlight important points, this flyer is as embellishing as the template allows.
With a smart layout and a unique font, this menu design is suitable for small restaurant operators of cafes, steaks and even eateries. Its graphic files come in both Letter and A4 formats for added marketing flexibility.
4.
If a full menu customization is what you want, then this template cannot be discarded. It gives you full control over the color palette, objects, images, text and content, making it easy to showcase your top selling menu items!
Print-ready, multi-layered menu template is good for any type of restaurant you work in. It comes with JPG graphics and Photoshop PSD graphics files.
5.
With a simple yet eye-catching restaurant menu design, this proposal showcases your small restaurant's dishes in an easy-to-read format. This makes it ideal for people of all ages, including young children, the elderly, and everyone in between.
The sharp color contrast is enough to highlight the best-selling items, allowing hungry eaters to grab them with ease. The template is ideal for a restaurant, pub, bar or cafe.
6.
Small restaurant owners are always on the hunt for menus that are simple and attractive, convey information clearly and convincingly. This menu template is attractive to restaurant owners of all types as it features a multifunctional creative design. If you want to sell more of your signature dishes than ever before, this template is a great choice as it showcases your best product front and center.
7.
Clean design, large fonts, and an attractive presentation are all part of a restaurant menu design. Make your most mouth-watering dishes easy to spot for hungry eaters with a clear template format, easy-to-read fonts, and great color choices.
Don't be confused by the name: the template can be quickly turned into a menu for restaurants, cafes and steaks. Print-ready, this menu is compatible with Adobe CS4 or higher.
8. Fruit Juice Menu Flyer / Magazine Ad
Bursting between a multitude of colors and brightness, this fantastic menu template offers complete customization. Have a restaurant you want to create a menu for?
It's a great choice as it comes in Letter and A4 sizes; editable text; and images that can be swapped. In short, it is a restaurant menu design that will help you sell more dishes and spread word of mouth.
9 Sailor Restaurant Package
This clean and presentable menu template comes with a neutral solid background and black fonts to help you write dishes right off the page. With Photoshop PSD graphic files, this design organizes your small restaurant offerings into well-ordered rows and columns for quick understanding. Editing requires a minimum of Adobe CS6.
10. Cafe Menu and Restaurant Template
This interesting menu template has a flat, neutral background and solid, bold colors that display food graphics and images. The result is a clean, well-organized small restaurant menu design that allows you to showcase the best dishes to your diner's hungry customers. The text is customizable so you can customize it to suit any restaurant you work at. It comes with Photoshop PSD and Vector EPS graphic files.
11.
A versatile menu design, this template is perfect for any small restaurant serving burgers, veggie options, sushi and everything in between! With a clean, crisp and juicy design, it's perfect for drawing your diners' eyes on your menu's most sumptuous dishes. Large and bold fonts encourage reading. All said and done, you get a print-ready menu template with five unique layouts to choose from.
12.
Captivate the appetite and attention of eaters with this thoughtful and neat menu. Creating buzz and encouraging your visitors to spread word of mouth, this template is great for multi-purpose use.
Whether you're in a bar, restaurant, grill, or canteen, you'll be able to highlight your signature dishes and serve your customers a sip of water with this handy template. It includes Photoshop PSD graphic files and full customization with easily editable texts and images.
13. Doodle Cafe Menu + Business Card
The copious amount of white space in this menu's design makes it very useful in guiding diners' eyes to the mouth-watering items on your small restaurant's menu.
This template features 3D elements such as shading, which is a useful graphic design element that makes food images appear to drop right down on your visitors. Comes with a business card template as a bonus.
14.
This restaurant menu template is completely minimalist. Your diners will love the spartan design, broken up with splashes of color and images to highlight the ingredients in your dishes.
Typographically wise, this template features clean, large, and easy-to-read fonts in headings that help visitors make their choice. InDesign INDD and Photoshop PSD graphics files are included, and business cards are part of this template pack!
15. Food Menu Package 5
Small restaurant owners will love this menu template pack, which promises full customization. You can easily and quickly change the logo, text, and images to control menu design and messaging.
The menu layout - broken down into cards - is ideal for showcasing your establishment's specialties. This clean, modern template is suitable for all types of restaurants: cafes, canteens, steakhouses and more!
16.
Create a welcoming atmosphere for your visitors with this menu template that combines the contrast of light and dark dynamics. This modern and attractive layout features alternating black and gray backgrounds that provide an even backdrop for displaying your small restaurant's dishes.
With large headings and a two-column design, this menu makes tastier meals that you want to sell. The template comes in A4 size and is ready to print. You can easily add information about your restaurants and get this menu quickly!
17. Food Menu Pack
If your small restaurant is serving a large number of dishes, then this restaurant menu design is perfect for your purposes. Featuring a menu pack with two and three shapes, this pack comes with Photoshop PSD graphics files.
Its evenly spaced page elements and large, readable headings and subheadings ensure that your visitors don't delay ordering. Full customization allows you to manage messages.
18. Minimalist Menu
Minimalism is the main theme of this restaurant menu template, which means a super simple and elegant approach to design and presentation of information. Beautiful filling on the white space focuses the eyes of visitors on the names of your dishes.
Clean spacing ensures that people point to what they want without thinking. Multipurpose design means use in any restaurants, cafes and fast food places!
19. Food & Restaurant Menu Chalkboard Template
Huge beautiful images are at the heart of this beautiful menu template. Set your visitors' eyes on the most popular dishes by impressing with high-quality images splashed across this template.
Whether you're running a small restaurant, diner, sushi cafe, or internet cafe, this template will showcase your food at its best! Full customization is provided where you can change the text and images as you wish.
20.
This menu template pack comes as a bonus with both 2-sided and 3-sided menu layouts and templates business cards. With its black and gray design, this menu is an example of minimalism and aesthetics.
Contrast is used effectively to make reading easier, and the font is large enough to impress your visitors. Text, colors and fonts are all at your disposal with full customization!
Optimize your menu for better results
Without ready-made menu templates, you will have to design the layout yourself, which can be difficult. How do you arrange your topics? Choose simplicity or scope?
Creatively designed restaurant menu template gives you a professional starting point to work from. Here are some menu tips to help you increase your sales:
- Place the most important menu items in the first place customers will look, which is in the upper left corner, just like when reading a book.
- Organize your menu into sensible and cohesive sections, from appetizers in the top left corner towards main courses.
- Use only the highest resolution product images to give the impression of high quality food and ingredients.
- Remove dollar signs from menus as studies show that customers spend more money without dollar signs in front of prices.
Customize your menu and optimize it for sales and customer service.
Restaurant owners often underestimate the importance of menu design. We are sure that you are probably familiar with the fact that many restaurants offer visitors simply absolutely unattractive menus. If you own a restaurant, then you should definitely take care of the design of the menu, as this is very important. Your top priorities are to provide great service and quality food.
Today we do not want to give someone as an example and shout that in the modern world every person is obliged to be interested in design and understand it. After all, this is not so. Many people today use not very beautiful objects, clothes, shoes, they don’t really care how the restaurant menu looks like, furniture, cars, and so on. Many people throughout their lives do not want to devote even a minute to design, functionality or aesthetics. This is both good and terrifying at the same time, and at the same time, you should not forget that there are other people who care a lot about these things.
Imagine that you have entered a restaurant where absolutely everything creates a pleasant impression: interior, service, music, food, menu design. Many try to pay attention to all sorts of little things, and really be proud of the care and attention with which this or that thing was created.
On the other hand, we often come across such establishments where we want to eat and leave as soon as possible.
If the restaurant is making money, even if it's small, why not hire a professional designer to take responsibility for the design of business cards, flyers, menus, and more? If you, as a restaurant owner, care about the image of your establishment and business in general, then you should definitely pay attention to this. If you have no desire to invest in your own business, it says what kind of businessman you are.
Please don't think that the menu is the only thing to pay attention to. It seems to us that each restaurant should be decorated somehow uniquely, with some idea, in order to withstand competition, in order to attract the attention of visitors and journalists, it must provide quality service, use all kinds of effective marketing moves to attract visitors, provide visitors with great decoration and the interior of the establishment.
Let's finally talk about the menu:
* Do you have an executive class restaurant or is it more of an entertainment area? Can a visitor understand this from your menu?
* Is your menu functional?
* Does your logo appear on the menu?
* Is the print small? Is it easy to read?
* Is the layout of the menu simple and neat? Or is it misleading?
* Is your menu durable?
* Are you going to change the menu every couple of months?
You should answer these questions. Menus are a great way to give visitors an impression of your establishment. You will be surprised how powerful the effect of the menu can be. If you do not have design skills, we recommend that you hire a talented designer to help you solve this problem.
Today we want to present you 35 examples of beautiful menu designs. We have handpicked only the best examples of implementations to help you get inspired for a little rebranding.