Design a good menu

Mar 20, 2025

Here you will find tips for designing your own menu. Of course, it requires a bit of flair and possibly experience with a design tool to create a professional menu for a restaurant, café or takeaway. You can also create a sketch that you send to a professional who can quickly set it up and get it ready for printing.

The menu card should represent the restaurant

The first tangible thing your guests are presented with is your menu, and it is therefore very important that the guest has a good experience as soon as they open it.

If your menu is worn and looks ugly, the guest will start to wonder if the food is too.

The menu card represents your dishes, so your menu card should always be sharp and look inviting. The structure should be simple, and it should be easy for the customer to understand the price and, not least, the range.

Tip 1: Follow the concept

First of all, your menu must be consistent with the restaurant's concept.

If the concept is built around families with children, it is an advantage for the menu to have many illustrations and perhaps different colors to signal that there is room for everyone.

If your concept is in the gourmet direction, the menu should reflect seriousness and be classic. A neutral background with short text in black makes the dishes appear inviting, exclusive and authentic.

Your menu should reflect the surroundings your guests are in.

Tip 2: The prices

One of the most important elements of the menu is the prices. For example, you can use rounded amounts without decimals so that the focus is not on the price. You can also use psychological prices, such as 79 kr., so that it looks cheaper.

It is important to remember that price should not be the deciding factor in whether your guests choose a particular dish. Therefore, you should avoid placing prices in a separate column, as this will cause the customer to judge the dishes based on price, instead of description.

It may be an advantage to omit "kr." or ",-" after the amount, as it distracts the guest from the fact that they are spending money.

Tip 3: Highlight profitable dishes

In every restaurant, there are some dishes that sell more than others – and some of them are more profitable than others.

Placing these dishes in a marked frame or box creates an eye-catcher for your guests that can be hard to let go of. This frame or box should be placed in the middle - or slightly higher than the middle - of the menu card.

This way, you increase the chance that the guest will choose to order your most profitable dishes, which will ultimately benefit you.

Tip 4: Detailed descriptions

It can therefore be an advantage to make your dishes more exotic and authentic through a detailed description – of course, you just have to remember to stick to the truth.

A study conducted by the American university Cornell University has shown that dishes with detailed descriptions sell better, and it also makes guests think that the dishes also taste better!

You can see how to do this in the example below.