How to create a Profitable Restaurant Menu?

Are you a food business owner? Then, your business’s most important part is deciding what food you will serve your customers. Your Restaurant’s food menu is the best way to display your users what you offer them.

It would help if you showcased the meals and dishes you offer neat yet creatively. It would appeal to your customers at once and will make them go through the entire menu. Moreover, if the menu is created neatly, it will let people easily find the dishes they are searching for.

To gain an array of loyal customers, you need to serve them delicious and fair-priced dishes. And a well-crafted menu gives them an overview of your offerings in a single glance.

Crafting a food menu involves much work, from deciding the food items to picking a theme for the menu. Moreover, not just dine-in but takeout and online delivery are equally crucial. So, it would also help if you had a tailored menu for your digital orders.

So, if you are looking for the right guidance on how to create a menu for your restaurant, this blog is for you. Let us understand the step-by-step to create your Restaurant Menu from scratch.

Why Your Restaurant Needs a Good Menu?

Your restaurant menu acts like a salesperson. So, the menu design, layout, order of food items, font, color, etc., all play an important role in the whole food ordering system. It helps in increasing your food orders or sales.

For instance, if you put more emphasis on your most profitable and popular dish on the menu, it will grab people’s attention in the first instance. Thus, your food menu is the primary source of increasing your sales.

Before creating your menu, design a well-thought strategy on which dishes you want your customers to order more. Keep your menu attractive and appealing enough to make your customers order more.

Make sure the theme of your menu reflects your food brand. Choose the color and font that aligns with your branding.

How to Create A Profitable Restaurant Menu?

Pre-Planning

As we said, the menu should be well-thought and planned. So, the first step will be to focus on your restaurant concept, stakeholders, and a few other things.

The food menu you will create will depend on your restaurant concept. If you plan to serve Chinese food, you must note the variety of Chinese dishes. Think of the variations you can make to the classic dishes.

Don’t go over the board in adding all the variety. Keep dishes that your chef is the best at preparing. Keeping a few star dishes is recommended as it makes a choice easier for customers

Decide the Food Items

The core part of your restaurant food menu is the list of all the food and beverages you will offer your customers. It would help if you had a clear picture of what you want to serve.

The choice of the dishes or cuisines depends on the preferences of the audience you want to serve. For instance, if your target audience is Millenials, you should keep fast food as the top food item to serve.

Once you have decided on the dishes to serve, the next step is to note them down. List all the food items you want to serve. You can also create separate menus for-

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner

Also, write down the top 3 or 5 dishes that will be the star dishes of your restaurant. For example, if you are a Italian restaurant, the top 3-star dishes can be:

• Pasta
• Pizza
• Momos

You can have different dishes in your list of top 3 cuisines.

Categorize Menu Items

Once you note down all the food items, you plan to serve. The next step is categorizing them. You can categorize various food items into:

• Appetizer
• Main Course
• Dessert
• Beverages
• Soups & Salads
• Chicken Entrees
• Seafood Entrees

Keep your star dishes on top as you want your customers to order them often. List all the menu items in proper design and order as you want them to look on the final menu.

To choose the categories, again think of your restaurant concept and the dishes you serve, and then pick the categories. Place the dished in each category and finalize.

Categorizing the food menu makes it look more organized, making it easier for customers to find the dishes and the cuisine they want to order.

Set Menu Prices

The next step is to set a price for all the menu items listed. The price for each food item includes the cost of the dish with your margin. You must give enough time to calculate the cost and the profit margin you must keep.

Again, it depends on your target customers. The prices must align with the budget of your customers. If the prices are too high, you will lose your new customers after a single visit.

If you want loyal customers that visit your restaurant regularly, you must keep the prices that serve the purpose of both. You can also analyse the data of your previous sales. You can see which food item is most preferred by your customers. Based on that, you can increase the prices of those food items a bit to make extra profits.

You can also lower the prices for those dishes you want your customers to try at least once. If the price is low, they will go ahead to order and try.

Create Menu Descriptions

Now you have noted down all the menu items and added their prices, what next? The next step is to entice your customers with the creative descriptions of your menu items.

Along with the dish name, if you add a brief description of the dish, it appeals to your customers to order. They can read the dish’s details, such as its ingredients, etc. What makes the dish special, the source of ingredients, etc.

Proper menu descriptions offers many benefits:

1. Help people understand what they will actually get on their plates.
2. When the customers can see the details of the dish, they can immediately decide what to order. Thus, it helps in turning tables faster.
3. People will ask fewer questions regarding any dish as they can read the details in the description.
4. Customers will get what they ordered and thus, improved customer satisfaction.

You can also hire a copywriter to write down the creative descriptions. Creative and appealing descriptions will smile your customers’ faces and make them order more. You can use refreshing, crispy, tangy, sour, sweet, etc., to explain your dishes well.

Design the Menu

By now, all the content part is done, including the menu names, descriptions, and prices. The next step is to focus on the design.

While designing a menu for a restaurant, menu engineering plays an important part. The menu engineering involves the visual design and the menu descriptions you add. You can use proven tactics to make your restaurant menu more appealing to customers and profitable.

As we are saying from the beginning, the design of the menu must be pleasing and catchy. Decide the color and font of the menu. They should reflect your restaurant branding.

Further, as per menu engineering, you should highlight the restaurant’s most popular items. You can highlight your restaurant’s most profitable dishes in a variety of ways:

• Write them in a different font
• Write them in a different color
• Write them in a shaded box
• Write in Bold

Next is Menu Descriptions. Creative use of words for your restaurant’s menu descriptions can help you secure some extra orders. Going creative in writing descriptions is a great way to entice your customers to order more. For instance, you can write a description of white sauce pasta as rich pasta with silk-like cream topped with Italian herbs and chilly flakes to flatter your eyes and taste buds.

At the same time, take care not to go over the board. Too bright color or too much content in one place will make the menu look messy. Color Psychology works for each business, so choose the colors for the menu aptly.

Decide the Final Design

You have neatly finalized the menu’s content, font, and color scheme. Now it’s time to decide on the final design. You can give a designer all the content and design scheme and get your beautiful menu designed.

The designer shares different templates; you can choose the one that best suits your restaurant branding.

Consider these things when you choose a design for the restaurant menu:

Simple Design: The menu should be simple and neat. The content should be neatly written and visible. It must be easy for users to comprehend in one glance.

Golden triangle: Human eyes first look at the center or middle of the page, then move to the top right and finally to the top left. So, place your star dishes with high-margin at the center.

Remove Dollar Signs: Users tend to avoid high-paying dishes. According to a study, people ordered more when the dollar sign was not on the food menus. So, add the menu item’s price but not the dollar sign.

Add Menu Photos

Images and photos of the food items clearly show customers what they will get. Make sure to add high-quality images that appeal to customers to order instantly.

But do not cover your food menu with just the images. It will distract them from the main content. Consider adding photos of just the top food dishes.
You can hire a food photographer to click the high-definition pictures. If it goes out of your budget, you can click the images on your own. Filter and edit them to look better using photo editing tools like Canva or Snapseed.

Further, you will need to update your menu regularly. So, make sure your menu design has enough space to adjust the changes. You don’t want to create the menu from scratch each time there is an update.

Approve and Print

Before you give your approval to print the menu, finally, get the menu content proofread. A single spelling mistake or punctuation error can change the meaning fully. Further, it will also affect the reputation of your restaurant. You can invite your colleagues to help you with this process. Once you proofread the menu, it’s time to print your menu.

Upload the Menu to the Restaurant’s Website

You have got your physical menu printed. Now it’s time to upload it to your restaurant’s website. Online ordering is more prevalent these days, so you must have a digital menu for your restaurant.

According to a survey, 69% of people said they visit a restaurant’s website before visiting for dine-in. The website helps them decide whether to visit the restaurant or not.

Secondly, you can also collect digital orders through the online menu on your website. Digital Orders, also known as QR Code orders, are quite prevalent after the COVID outbreak. It offers many benefits- people can check the menu online and place orders. Secondly, it involves zero contact, thus preventing the spread of the virus. So, these are a few reasons why your restaurant needs a QR Code menu.

Conclusion

Creating a menu for your restaurant is not as easy a task as it seems. It requires focus and attention to detail. You need to take care of many things together. From deciding the food items for the menu to writing descriptions, deciding the prices to choosing the design. Each task requires well planning and engineering.

We hope this blog will help you in creating your menu easily. You can use the tips mentioned in the blog to make it more profitable and appealing.