Dine In Or Take Out Menu Printing

Your menu can be much more than just a list of food and drinks! Use layout, marketing, and design to make a big difference to the success of your establishment. Working with a professional printer and using tried and true methods for menu printing and design can make your restaurant or coffee shop go from just breaking even to breaking out!

When you are ready for menu printing, keep these ten essential elements in mind. Take a look at your current menu; does it measure up to these guidelines? A menu redesign can help boost stagnant or declining sales by up to ten percent.

  1. Start with a theme. The colors, paper, font, and pictures should reflect the style and personality of the restaurant. Everything should match the colors and fonts used on any and all promotional materials. Using a unified theme in your take out menu printing can help promote your company brand; if everything looks different, your customers will have a hard time remembering you. If your take out menu printing presents your restaurant’s personality to your customers consistently, they will remember it. They’ll be excited to be there and look forward to coming back.
  2. Food looks better in color. For an upscale establishment, if your menu stays the same for most of the year, spring for full-color printing. For casual restaurants or frequent menu changes, you can get away with fewer colors and still show off your favorite items.
  3. Use a paper that will last as long as your menu does. Do you change menus frequently? You can save money by using a lesser grade of paper for your menu. Save even more money on menu printing by ordering custom printed menu shells and adding the menu items with your laser printer. Will you be sticking with the same offerings for a while? Make the page last as long as the menu offerings with a heavier stock.
  4. Keep your menus neat and clean with a coating or lamination. This will protect your menu from dirty fingers and spilled drinks. A clean menu gives the appearance of a clean restaurant; a dirty menu reflects poorly on you! Your customers may not walk out without eating, but they may hesitate before coming back.
  5. Design your menu with three different type fonts. You can use one font for section headings, another for the listed menu items, and a third font for specialty or highlighted items. Think about the lighting in your restaurant and the average age of your customers -- make sure the menu can be read easily! Make sure the type is large enough; try to use a font size of 11pt or higher for menu items. For extra readability, make sure there is a strong contrast between the color of the paper and the color of the type you choose for your menu printing.
  6. Layout your menu in a reverse Z pattern. People tend to look first at the upper right side of a menu. Then the upper left. The lower right and then the lower left. Place your higher profit items in that upper right hand spot to attract the most attention.
  7. Use your dine in or take out menu printing space wisely. Don’t waste valuable page space describing something your customers already recognize; a hamburger is a hamburger and a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. Save your space for describing unfamiliar items and signature offerings to entice your customers into trying something different.
  8. Make it easy to find what you want. List your offerings in the order they would be eaten! Appetizers, soups, and salads first. Sandwiches, burgers, and entrees in the middle, and desserts last.
  9. Use special symbols in your dine in or take out menu printing to draw attention to special menu items. Stars, bullets, a miniature logo, or other special icons in your menu printing can help draw a customer’s eye towards the specialties of the house. Special symbols set items apart and can increase sales of those particular menu items by as much as fifteen percent!
  10. Proofread your dine in or take out menu printing carefully! Unless you want your customers to leave laughing at your freshly baked braid, make sure everything is spelt and priced correctly! Restaurant patrons may question how carefully you’ll prepare a meal if you can’t carefully prepare your menu.

some of the tips for take out menu printing also apply to catalogue printing, now read "How to Make your Catalogue a Success... Have More Sales While Reducing your Costs"

"Ten Essential Elements For Dine In Or Take Out Menu Printing" was brought to you by Advance Printing and Signs Pty Ltd...A true "one stop" PRINTING & SIGNAGE supplier. Want to save TIME, MONEY & STRESS on all your printing needs? Contact us on 02 9749 1966 at 38 Railway Street, Lidcombe, Sydney, NSW Australia 2141