Menu design for cafés, restaurants and bars

A menu is a sales document

A menu is read by nearly every customer, at the moment they are deciding what to spend. Very few pieces of design in a business get that much attention at that useful a moment.

Most menus are treated as a list instead. Everything the same size, no order beyond the categories, prices lined up in a column that invites people to read down them and choose the cheapest thing.

Laid out to be read in order

A good menu leads the eye. The dishes worth selling get a bit more room. Prices sit close to the item rather than in a right aligned column that turns the menu into a price list. Sections are clearly broken so a table of four can all find what they want without passing it round.

None of that is decoration. It changes what people order.

Built so you can change it

Menus change. Prices move, suppliers change, a dish comes off. A menu you cannot edit is a menu that goes out of date and gets a sticker over it.

So alongside the print ready artwork you get an editable template with the type and spacing locked, which means a price change takes two minutes and does not quietly wreck the layout.

Allergens and the legal side

Irish food businesses have to declare the fourteen listed allergens and make that information available to customers. Menus routinely handle this badly, squeezing it into tiny type at the bottom or leaving it on a separate sheet nobody sees.

We design the layout to carry it clearly. The accuracy of the information stays with you and your kitchen, but the menu will not be the reason it goes unread.

Print, screen and the door

Most places need more than one thing: the printed menu, a takeaway version, a board behind the counter, a QR code menu on a phone, and specials for social. Designed together, they match. Commissioned one at a time, they never quite do.

Who this suits

Cafés, restaurants, bars, gastropubs, hotels and food trucks across Ireland, from a single A4 menu to a full set for a new opening.