A menu influences a customer’s decision while placing an order. If you already have a well-designed menu, great. If you don’t, don’t fret. You can always redesign it. In fact, a menu redesign could increase restaurant profits by up to 15%. The stat tells us that a well-designed restaurant menu aids in shooting those sales numbers up.

In order to help you design your restaurant menu, the article shares four unique examples. Following each, we’ll also examine what makes the menu stand out from the conventional ones.

However, if you don’t have an existing menu, you must create one. Before diving into the examples, let’s look at creating a restaurant menu with minimal effort.

Create restaurant menu using menu templates

In today’s day and age, building an entire website or simply creating a restaurant menu takes a few clicks. So if you need to get a restaurant menu ready, you can create one without hiring a professional designer. A menu template free download from lightspeed will help you create one. They have several menu templates for restaurants like yours to use.

You can download a template that resonates with your brand, tweak it, change colours, and add/adjust menu items and costs. You’ll have a menu ready quickly and with a few clicks. Hiring a professional designer is a good option for giant food chains. However, creating a menu on your own will help you explore the domain while also saving the cost of hiring a resource.

You get complete control over the design and can keep creating/recreating the layout as and when you want. Finding that one template might take you some trial and error. Once you get the best-suited template, customizing it will get easier.

Now that you know about online restaurant menu templates let’s head to the examples.

Backyard burgers

Backyard Burgers is a burger chain headquartered in the USA. Looking at their menu, we see that all the menu items are presented neatly. Along with the orderly placement of menu items, the high-quality pictures of the burgers will undoubtedly catch a visitor’s attention for at least a few seconds longer than customary.

In addition, the fonts are readable, and each menu item has a short description, further enhancing the readability.

Use high-quality images sparingly

The menu is, without a doubt, clean and straightforward. However, what captures the visitors’ eyes are the images. You can choose to either use images with text or create the layout using only illustrations. Photographs in menu designs can boost sales by at least 30%. The stat is enough to convince you to use high-quality pictures in your menu.

Another good practice is to highlight the bestselling items. You can do so by using images sparingly so that the best-selling items with higher profit margins are visible to the customers with nil effort. This also ensures that the customers feel that mouth-watering feeling, further eliciting feelings of hunger and stimulation.

A menu with beautiful imagery will likely:

Help customers make an informed decision Enable customers to place quick orders, given they can easily see the food itemsIncrease your customers’ appetite Boost sales Given the benefits of visuals, ensure you include high-quality images of menu items in your menu and see how it increases your sales figures.

Boston Market

Boston Market is a restaurant located in Boston, USA. The USP of this website design is that it stays loyal to the company’s branding. When you click on the menu, the submenu items appear with different plates per category, helping the customers navigate the menu easily. They can go through different food types without having to be redirected to other web pages.

The website also has the option to download the menu. Doing so gives customers a choice to place an order when they wish.

Add unique features

The less is more approach works best in designing. However, when it comes to adding features, the more, the better. You want to create a menu that is easy for your customers to navigate but also has some unique features. If we look at this menu, it has several notable features that make it unforgettable.

On clicking the menu item, you get redirected to a page where you see the dish with a short description that’s easy to read. On the same page, there’s a panel with three items: More favorites, Nutrition, and Start order. You can easily view and select other dishes from the More Favorites section. While clicking the nutrition tab, the page gets redirected to a nutrition calculator. This is an excellent feature for health-conscious folks who monitor their daily calorie intake.

Moreover, you’ll see pop ups when you hover over some dishes. For example, when you click on the Roasted Turkey Breast item, you’ll see a popup Sauce it up Zesty BBQ on hovering the picture. These simple yet helpful features entice the customers.

Mugs

Mugs, a restaurant located in France, is a superb example of a restaurant menu that’s everything but conventional. As you scroll through the website, you see excellent visuals with a scroll-down option to guide you through the assortment. This menu shows you don’t have to stick to what’s expected from a menu.

The menu is interactive and fun for any visitor to go through. You’ll also see all the menu items simply by clicking on the type of food. The website doesn’t redirect you to a different page for each food type. Instead, a slider popup appears on the same web page, making it easier to discover all kinds of food.

Designing has no rules. The one rule of designing is that it has no rules.

After analysing this restaurant’s menu, the need for experimentation with design is quite evident. A creative menu not only brings out the personality of a restaurant but also adds weight to the brand. It holds power to entice customers and influence their decision. Along with the stellar visual aspect of the menu, a creative, interactive menu also has several other benefits listed below:

Customers get a quick understanding of orders given the neat design It is relatively easy to navigate since customers don’t have to move from one page to another Customers can place an order with a fewer number of clicks It’s easy for you to redesign the menu If you’ve already created a straightforward menu, take this example as an inspiration to redesign it. While if you’re willing to build your menu from scratch, ensure you make it engaging for the customers. Take the help of data-driven strategies to create a design that enhances the user experience and, eventually, sales.

Colonia Verde

One of the best things about this design is it has a division between the different types of meals. The menu has categories such as dinner, brunch, lunch or drinks. At first, it may seem like visitors will be redirected to a different page for each type. However, that’s not the case. The menu is simply a slider that allows visitors to easily navigate various menus without loading an individual page each time.

Categorise menu items

While the menu is typical otherwise, it stands out because of the categorization. It is well-thought simply because they’ve considered that customers are more likely to order for dinner. So ‘Dinner’ is the first food category type, followed by lunch, brunch and drinks. Under each item, there’s a short description that includes the dish’s ingredients to make it easy to choose for the customer.

Categorisation has following benefits:

All menu items are upfront under their relevant category Gives customers clarity as they won’t have to skim through all menu items Aids customer’s decision-making Helps boost salesWhile there are several ways to create a menu that boosts sales, categorizing menu items is the simplest way. Ensure you consider this when designing your restaurant’s menu.

Update menu regularly

Whether a small restaurant or a giant food chain, you’ll need to be ahead of your competitors. Updating your restaurant menu is the simplest way to do so. Updating includes menu items and design both. This is not to say you should update it monthly or once every few weeks. However, consider seasonal food items and the latest design trends to know when it may be time for a menu update.

While many online menu templates are available, you can always consider hiring designers if you have a loose budget. Hiring professionals will save you a lot of time as they already know the latest design trends. So as per your restaurant requirements and budget, go for the option that meets your needs.