Menu Design That Enhances Your Customer Base

Last updated on December 7th, 2021

A restaurant or a bar must have an exciting and memorable menu card. The purpose of a menu card is not limited to the list of food and drink items served and their prices. Instead a strategically created menu design conveys a brand message to the customers and expresses your restaurant’s personality. When designed rightly, this tiny menu card can help you build a solid base of loyal customers.

The restaurant business is highly competitive. Even if you run a bar, you need to make a clever strategy to market your business. The toughness of competition can be gauged from the fact that 60% restaurants in the U.S are shut down in the very first year.

Very few of the remaining restaurants run successfully beyond five years. These stats tell that your menu design can play a key role in branding your business. Do not forget that a menu card creates the first impression on the customers.

Menu design is a low cost but effective marketing tool for a restaurant. The customers generally go through the whole of the menu before ordering something to eat and drink.

So, create a menu card with the help of a menu template to enhance your restaurant’s brand image. You should also know about the preferences of the customers. Here are some tips to make your menu more useful for visitors.

Here Are Some Tips To Build A Solid Customer Base Using Your Menu Card Design

Before you start designing your menu card, make sure that you know all about your competitors in your vicinity. Visit their websites. Most of them have websites to book seats online.

You will find their menu cards on their websites. Get a feel of the card and see how it stands out. A closer look at their menu card design will help you create a menu that stands out.

When you are at your competitor’s’ website, pay attention to their website design as well. You will notice that the design elements of colors, etc. are the same both in website and menu card. So, while taking a good look at their menu card, get a closer look at their website design as well.

01. Design Your Menu Layout

After you know who your competitors and their restaurant menu, now you should plan your menu design. You must be clear about your menu layout. This means that everything from colors, typeface, images to their place in the design should be planned in advance.

For example, place your drinks items first at the top of the menu card. This is because the customers like to order drinks first as starters before ordering the main course food. So, place the beverages on top even above the appetizers.

02. Colors And Font

Make sure that the colors and fonts you pick for your menu design should reflect your restaurant’s theme. For example, vibrant colors like purple, turquoise, red and green are best suited if you run a Mexican themed restaurant.

Similarly, pick the fonts depending on the restaurant theme. If yours is a French bistro restaurant, it may have menu card in a classic script or a simple plain font. A casual restaurant might have a playful font.

Another thing to remember here is that you should take menu card colors and fonts of your other design items. This means that your menu card must have the same design elements that your business card design, websites, brochures, advertisements, etc. have.

03. Pay Attention To Photos

A professionally designed menu card has photos strategically taken and placed. Photos of food items direct customers to their perfect dish. So, have some pictures of food taken from professional photographers.

Such images on a menu card create a dining environment in a restaurant. But the pictures should be only a few. Provide a written description of the food. The dinners want to know about ingredients of the food.

To make your menu card design stand out, you can experiment with illustration and graphic design also. But it should be a quality illustration with a purpose.

04. Go Minimal

A trendy menu card design makes a quick good impression on the dinners. Minimalistic design is a contemporary trend. It involves only a minimum amount of design elements in creating a graphic design item.

You can notice this trend everywhere in creating logo design and many others. Minimalistic design is all about keeping a design simple. It is about cutting the clutter.

So, have only few images, use clean and relevant typefaces, and present your description of food items in an appealing manner.

Have a lot of blank space on the card for better visibility of important content on the card. Use simple frames and solid rectangles in the card design.

These are the key points you must consider when creating a menu card for your restaurant or bar.

Remember that a purpose of menu card is to help customers pick food items from a wide range of foods available. So, every detail should be cleanly designed. The design must be attractive so that it creates a dining environment.

Here Are Two Inspirational Menu Card Designs That Are An Example Of How An Ideal Menu Card Should Look

01. Emirati Treat

The Emirati Treat menu card is for a UAE based restaurant. This is simple card design. The entire food offerings of the restaurant are neatly categorized in beautifully illustrated column. Each column mentions special food offerings in that categories.

The very first column in the card puts the most popular special foods from the restaurant. This helps the customers in picking a popular food item right away.

[Source: View Case Study On Designhill]

Or, the customer can take time to read all the items in detail before placing an order. The card design is colorful, catchy and gives many options to the customer.

Notice that the designer broke the monotony by incorporating different sizes of the food images, special hand letterings in Arabic style, and creating small boxes of images and text.

02. Choza Taqueria

Choza Taqueria serves made-to-order Mexican street food along with household salsas. Its menu card neatly displays its breakfast dishes, main course, and side offerings so that the customer can make a quick choice.

The card has just one color and clean use of text. The fonts are in different sizes to highlight the food items and to give the design an attractive look. The card design is an exemplary layout that displays the entire food servings in a simple but unique way.

Do you also need a menu design for your restaurant? You may not be having a big marketing budget. But that should not be a concern. Your startup restaurant can easily get many design ideas by crowdsourcing your menu card work to Designhill.

[Source: View Case Study On Designhill]

This is a leading marketplace where business owners get their varied design needs to their satisfaction. The site has thousands of graphic designers who look for new work.

All you need to do is launch your menu card design contest and start getting dozens of new design concepts from as many designers at one affordable price. Designhill offers 100% Money Back Guarantee if the designs you get are not up to your satisfaction.

Conclusion

Menu card design is your tool to win the loyalty of your customers who dine in your restaurant. The design must be simple, minimalistic, and should have only relevant colors, fonts, and images that reflect your restaurant theme.

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