How to Make a Restaurant Menu From Scratch

The Restaurant menu is a very important marketing as well as a welcoming tool. Whenever customers, check into any restaurant to have their lunch, dinner or supper, it is the restaurant menu cover design that welcomes them even before they consult the waiters. Maybe you own a restaurant and you have never bothered to build your own menu for the restaurant or you could have had a very tough time when you were designing it if you have a menu in your restaurant already. Whichever your situation is, here is a very detailed but straight forward way of how to create your own menu for the restaurant.


Put Down a List of All Your Menu Items On one Sheet of Paper

If you want to maneuver throughout this simple but seemingly tedious process of creating a restaurant menu, you must start with the simple things that you know very well: the menu offerings. You do not want to start with the menu design itself, otherwise you will be daunted and you may abandon the whole process before you even start. List out all the meals that are offered in the restaurant on an Excel sheet, Google sheet, or simply a handwritten notebook.

Organize the Menu Into Sections

Come up with a logical order for your menu depending on what you want to appear first and vice versa. This essentially involves filling out the “Category” part of the menu template by specifying whether the item is an appetizer, dessert or entree category. The next thing is to decide which menu item is to appear on top of the menu and which one to appear at the bottom. Just browse through your menu to ensure that all menu items have fallen into the right place.


Decide on the Color of Your Scheme

Basing on your restaurant brand and the design you prefer for your restaurant menu covers, choose a colour that rhymes with other aspects of the restaurant to ensure coherence. The best way to do this is to take a short break from staring at the template as you prepare to come up with the best colour design . You can as well decide to have a plain black and white menu to spend less on menu printing.

Add Prices to the Menu

So far your excel menu is still lacking prices against each of the menu item despite prices being the most important aspect of the menu. To add prices on a menu designed from scratch, you need to take into consideration your inventory, prices as well as food cost estimation or percentages and come with a data-based decision. Otherwise, if you are just updating a previous menu it will be a little easier since you only need to update your current prices by editing the menu.


Describe Every Dish in Special Titles

Here, you need to be very skilled and tactful to come up with a very attractive mouthwatering description of each menu item as well as a very flamboyant menu cover design. Here you can consult the chef who cooked the meal and find out the story behind the cooking of the meal. Discover the ingredients used, the effort of cooking it and even the source of the ingredients to help you come up with a sweet attractive description for each and every menu item. Delicious, finger-licking, refreshing, and delectable are the most commonly used universal descriptions. You can expand on these.

Designing a menu for a restaurant can be very hectic, not to mention running the restaurant itself. It is time to make your clients feel satisfied whenever they come to your restaurant and they can get all information they need in one piece of paper rather than having to inquire from the waiters. Follow the guide above and you will be a step closer to knowing how to make a restaurant menu.

Read Also: How to Open Your Own Restaurant

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