These 4 menu templates will save your business

Opening an eatery, be it a bistro or a fine dining restaurant, demands a lot of effort and resources. Unfortunately, these businesses fail to thrive or even survive due to poor management and bad planning. As per usual, the folly is in the details such as the menus. Fortunate entrepreneurs will invest in expensive experts to engineer their menus. The smart ones go for more affordable alternatives such as our professionally designed menu templates. Find out how easy it is to use them by enjoying the rest of the article.

What does a well-structured menu look like?

Though not all food and beverage businesses encounter similar hurdles all of them require well-structured menus. What I mean by well-structured has to do with the overall experience and communication. That’s because the menu is essentially a reflection of your business. It must convey through its colors, shape, elements, and fonts hospitality and professionalism. So without further ado let’s take a look at this inviting ice cream parlor menu template and evaluate its efficiency.

Gelato is the first of the menu templates I want to show you. Makes sense since we’re deep into the warm season, right? Everybody likes to indulge their sweet tooth from time to time and when that happens to choose should go smoothly. This one is divided into two similar panels with four symmetric columns each displaying a specific category. It’s extremely easy to navigate as you can see and the colors were chosen to draw children’s attention. See how effortlessly it is to edit it to your liking in our editor!

Insert images in your menu

To highlight your best items you have two options that work like a charm. You can Bold the text which defines that certain special item or you can simply add eye-pleasing images like in the menu template below. The purpose of these images is to give your customers an idea of what they’ll get if they choose those dishes. That’s because we evaluate our meals with the help of our senses in this exact order: sight, smell, touch, and taste (sometimes even hearing but that’s rare).

Therefore, if you choose to insert images in your menu make sure you don’t go overboard and select only a couple per category. Experienced restaurateurs prefer adding one of their top three most expensive items on the menu and/or their signature dishes. It’s not an exact science but if you want to sell more of something this is a lucrative trick.

Emphasize products not prices

You can easily “manipulate” customers by suggesting what’s important and what is not. Please notice in the next example that prices are not highlighted precisely to keep attention away from them. That’s because out of these four menu templates this one was created specifically for fine dining restaurants. In this league, dishes tend to be a bit pricier so we want to leave them somewhere in the background. As a rule of thumb keep descriptions short and hide the prices in the text.

Just analyze how well structured, easy to navigate, and enticing the entire presentation is. The descriptions are short and familiar with an emphasis on the food, not the prices. Plus the Marinated grilled shrimp in the image dares us to try it.

Less is more in our menu templates

If you have too many options on your menu, your customers will feel overwhelmed by the abundance. The right strategy for this problem is to always have a few solid options for them to choose from. Don’t try to please everyone because you simply just can’t. Try to think like an accountant when you build your menu. Fewer items mean fewer losses so you have to figure out what’s the right proportion for your business.

Don’t forget about the order you present the items on your menu. In this menu template designed for wine bars, the list begins with sparkling wines and continues to white wines, rosé, and reds. This is the right order and I can’t stress this enough don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Use a QR code for your restaurant’s menu

If you haven’t thought about having a QR code for your restaurant’s menu, then now it’s time. Easily generate a QR code in Flipsnack, send it to print, and then place it on your restaurant’s tables. In just a few seconds they can flip through your digital menu on their mobile phones and search for their favorite dish. 

Final thoughts

If you can manage to follow these instructions and build your menu following the existing patterns implemented in our menu templates your customers will become regulars. And that’s what you’re after, right?!