How to Create and Design a Restaurant Menu?
Have you recently visited a restaurant and asked for their menu to order food. In today's post pandemic world, restaurants will most likely ask you to scan a QR Code at the restaurant to get the detailed list of the items they are serving along with their prices.
As soon as you scan the QR Code, a beautifully designed menu will appear on our screen. Just by looking at the menu, you know that the food is going to be delicious.
Designing a restaurant menu is indeed a challenging task, but let's talk about the importance of a restaurant menu and how you can easily make a restaurant menu for your business.
What is a Restaurant Menu?
A menu is a list of food and beverages along with their prices offered by a particular restaurant. As per the International Professional Terminology, a menu is just a “meal card” written in a certain format to inform and attract customers who want to order food from a restaurant.
An ideal restaurant menu consists of-
Basics: Items offered by restaurant
Pricing: Prices of dishes as per quantity (half/full)
Description: Basic ingredients of some dishes
Graphics: Images of delicious food items
Why Do You Need a Restaurant Menu?
Whether you own a 5-star restaurant chain or a cute little café at the corner of a street, you need to design a restaurant menu for the customers dining in or asking for delivery.
You need to create a restaurant menu due to following reasons:
Improve the customers’ retention rate and chances of repetitive customers
Promote and advertise your restaurant business
Impress the customers even before they place their order
Increase the sales and revenues of your restaurant business
Create better recall value in the minds of customers
Effectively communicate the identity of your restaurant
THINGS TO Remember While Designing a Menu for Restaurant
From content to the design of a restaurant menu, you need to take care of everything. You need to keep the following things in mind before creating a restaurant menu:
Habits and interests of your targeted audience
Expenditure habits of your potential customers
Prices and quantity offered by competitors
USP of your restaurant
By keeping these things in your mind, you can start designing a restaurant menu with the help of one of the leading graphic design software- AppilyQR.
However, you should have some basic knowledge of the following points.
Scanning Patterns of Customers
As per menu engineering sciences, a customer spends 109 seconds to scan a restaurant menu. It means that you need to create a restaurant menu that can immediately grab the attention of customers.
While mentioning the highest profit income items on your menu card, you must take care of the scanning patterns of your potential audience. You should try different styles of menu and test in the real-world to know what works best for you.
Categorizing Your Menu
No one likes to read a poorly structured menu card. You must first categorize the food in various categories such as appetizers, salads, soups, main course, etc., and then mention them in a logically divided section on your restaurant menu.
Your customers must find it easy to order food just by looking at a restaurant menu card. You need to properly categorize food and add to the restaurant menu for the smooth and seamless food ordering experience of your customers.
Knowledge of Typography
Typography is all about the arrangement of text to make it readable and visually appealing to customers. It involves an arrangement of typefaces, line-spacing, line lengths, adjustment of spaces between pairs of letters, and much more.
You must test and try various typography before settling on one that best suits your business. You can either use a single typeface through your menu card or try a combination of two-three typeface to categorize the food items. Make sure whatever typeface you choose; it would make your restaurant menu legible.
Meaning and Trends of Colors
Every color reflects a particular meaning in your restaurant menu card. For example, the cover of the menu card generally has a tinge of brown if it is meant for a café.
Meanings remain similar, but the trends of colors change with seasons, interests, and much more. Depending upon the latest trends, you should frequently update the colors in your restaurant menu. It would help you to effectively communicate the message that both your restaurant and food served is up to date.
Choose the colors based on the theme your restaurant business. Read and observe a bit about customers’ psychology before finalizing the color palette of your restaurant menu. Select the color combinations that can best reflect the mood of your restaurant.
Importance of Graphics and Illustrations
Graphics and illustrations can make your restaurant menu visually appealing. However, you need to be extra conscious while adding the images to your menu card. Make sure they are not misleading and truly justifies the quality of food and beverages you are serving.
Graphics is not only about the images of food items, but it also includes the logo of your brand, background of the menu card, nitty-gritty elements in the menu, and much more. You need to take care that every image you use must be of enhanced quality and can convey the personality of your restaurant to customers.
How to Design a Restaurant QR Menu?
To design a restaurant menu on your own, you must follow a few easy steps.
Step 1: Open your web browser and search for “AppilyQR”. It is one of the leading graphic design software that allows you to design digital QR menus.
Step 2: Once your click on AppilyQR Digital Menu, you will be sent to its homepage. To start designing your restaurant menu, you need to click on “Join Now”.
Step 3: You can now select or enter restaurant information under the “Restaurant” tab. When you click on the “Menu” option, Appily App Builder will offer you to add your categories and menu items for your restaurant menu. Depending on the type of your restaurant, you can select the following options for your menu:
Allow on-table order
Allow takeaway order
Allow delivery order
Allow online payment
Step 4: Considering your preferences, the theme of your restaurant, and the interests of your potential audience, you can edit the colors, background, font, and much more of pre-built templates. Make sure your menu design reflects the concept design of your restaurant.
Step 5: Once you finalize the design of your restaurant menu, preview it once and check if everything is in place. Don’t miss to check the spellings of dishes you add to your restaurant menu. “Download” or "Preview" your restaurant menu once you are satisfied with the design.
Now, you have a contactless QR menu for your restaurant ready to use and start taking orders.
Next Steps:
Explore as many menu design ideas as possible for your restaurant before finalizing one for your business. Just remember you can experiment with colors, texts, graphics, and everything in your restaurant menu. So, dig into your creative mind and explore the latest trends in restaurant menus!
Ready to create your Contactless QR Menu with Appily App Builder?
