Top 5 Restaurant Menu Design Mistakes
Your restaurant or takeaway menu is a crucial marketing tool that is designed to capture the customer’s attention and appetite. It should reflect the brand and identity of the business and helps create awareness.
With the lockdown and now the government’s ‘Eat Out To Help Out’ scheme, the food and drinks arena is more competitive than ever, so it’s essential that your menu creates traffic to your restaurant and attract new customers.
Let’s look at the top 5 menu design mistakes so you know what to avoid when creating your next restaurant menu.
Poor presentation
Customers spend a relatively short time looking at the menu, so it needs to be eye-catching and engage the customer. Be creative with the menu design, but keep it in line with your branding. Use colours, fonts, graphics and illustrations to create points of interest, perhaps highlighting and promoting dishes with the highest profit margin.
Placement of menu items
Be aware of the prime spots on a menu to which a customer’s eyes are drawn. For example, on a two-fold menu, the sweet spot is on the right-hand page, a few lines from the top, and on a tri-fold menu, it is a few lines down in the centre. Placing the most popular menu items in these spots can increase revenue.
Placement of the price
Avoid listing prices in one column, as it can encourage customers to select dishes based on their cost. In-line pricing detracts from making decisions based on the (preferably professional copy-written) descriptions of the dishes.
Unreadable font
If customers are unable to read the menu, they won’t be able to choose a dish, or it could lead to customer disappointment. While using more than one font is fine, for headings and descriptions, for example, avoid using too many as it can be confusing.
Dirty menus
No one wants to pick up a grubby, tattered menu, and it reflects unfavourably on your establishment. Make menus durable with a matte finish or laminating.
The success of the business largely comes down to what you sell so you must invest time and money into ensuring your menu helps to maximise your profit as much as possible.
If you need printing services in Hampshire for your restaurant, contact us today!
