The document discusses techniques for effective menu design. Good menu design can increase restaurant sales by 2-10%. It should match the restaurant's decor and theme to be user-friendly. Designers start by learning the restaurant's brand and vision from the chef. The menu's layout, colors, font, paper quality, and organization are all important to consider. With the right design, menus can enhance the dining experience and boost a restaurant's business.

1. 4 ❖ Restaurant Digest ❖ February, 2005
News
Techniques for Great Menu Design
By Elizabeth Orr
Restaurant Digest
G
ood menu design can
boost restaurant sales
by 2 to 10 percent,
according to National
Restaurant Association research in
2000. But the question remains —
what is good menu design? For lo-
cal designers, it’s a menu that com-
bines user-friendliness with a cer-
tain restaurant-specific flair.
For example,
restaurant man-
ager Jay Coldren
of Indebleu,
Wa s h i n g t o n ,
D.C., designed
menus with a
“found object”
theme to match
the international
atmosphere of the restaurant, which
blends French and Indian food. An
art major at college, he was able to
take over the menu design when
efforts by a graphic design firm
didn’t work out, he says.
He started with a palette of col-
ors inspired by those used in the
restaurant’s interior design, such as
warm oranges and creams, then
chose a “modern but exotic” font.
In keeping with the found object
theme, he designed a cocktail menu
that looks like a Washington, D.C.,
Metro map and a main dining menu
with a passport theme. He also drew
an Indebleu seal, which is featured
on the cover of every menu.
The results, he says, are designed
to make the menu a fun as well as a
necessary part of dining out, which
was one goal of the menu design.
“It’s hard to make adults smile,”
Coldren said.
COLDREN ESTIMATES that all
told, he spent about two months
working on the menus part-time.
For restaurants that wish to hire an
outside design firm, a typical price
tag is $3,000 to $6,000, depending
on the vendor and whether the de-
signer is also working on a restaurant
logo, table tents, or other pieces for
the restaurant. Freelancers are often
the best, and least costly, option for a
simplemenuredesign,saysCarolanne
O’Neil, creative director at West & As-
sociate, McLean, Va.
A designer typically starts with a
visit to the restaurant and a conver-
sation with the chef. Louanne
Welgoss, principle of LTD Creative,
Design should match decor and
help increase user-friendliness.
Frederick, Md., likes to start by talk-
ing about the restaurant’s logo and
theme, which helps tell her in which
direction to take the menu. “If it’s a
sports bar, you don’t want some-
thing feminine and pretty,” she says.
When designing a menu for one res-
taurant that used chalkboards in its
decor, LTD creative found similar il-
lustrations to those already used in
the restaurant and used them to cre-
ate a chalkboard effect for the menu.
Similarly, when Alexandria-based
firm Grafik
worked on
menus for the
Inn at Little
Washington,
Washington,
Va., partner
G r e g g
Glaviano used
a section of a
mural in the restaurant’s hall as a
menu cover.
The choice of colors can help tie
the menu into your restaurant,
O’Neil says. “Not colors that make
you hungry, like red and yellow. I
tend to go with colors I think are
tasty — like chocolate brown, lime
green, strawberry — something you
could apply to food.”
THE TYPEFACEused can be as key
to presentation as the colors, design-
ers say. “Typography is No. 1,”
Glaviano says. “You want elegance
and a clean organization.” The type-
face used in the menu should line
up with a restaurant’s general feel,
he says. While he used a classic-
looking font for the Inn, he has also
resorted to more modern-type de-
sign for contemporary restaurants.
How the information is organized
is also important, O’Neil says. The
most prominent place for specials
and other items the restaurant
wants to promote is the top of the
inside right page, she says. The least
prominent real estate — the back
of the menu — can be reserved for
beverages, any children’s menu, and
other things that don’t need as much
prominence. It’s also important to
group the information in an orga-
nized way, to make it easier for cus-
tomers to find what they want.
Common problems on menus in-
clude typos and spelling errors, de-
signers said. “Typos bother people,”
O’Neil says simply.
Designers are also bothered by
overly long or complex menus.
“People want to see the menu item,
what it is, and the price immediately.
You shouldn’t need a ruler to sort
through it,” Welgoss says.
Another challenge in menu design
is finding the right paper — some-
thing that will look clean and crisp
even after being handled with
greasy or wet fingers, and can be
replaced if prices or specials change.
To help one restaurant accomplish
this, O’Neil created plates for the
printer that had all of the colors ex-
cept the black ink used for the
prices. Being able to only change
one plate out of the four-color pro-
cess allowed the customer to run a
higher number of menus at a better
price per sheet, she said.
Coldren used a similar approach
for Indebleu menus, stockpiling a
paper base that could be redone
in the restaurant’s laser printer. To
get the right paper for the menu,
he scanned in passports from res-
taurant staff, then ordered 1,500
sheets printed with the design that
could be finished in a laser printer.
“You want elegance
and a clean
organization.”
— Gregg Glaviano, graphic
designer, Grafik
This menu, designed by Carolanne O’Neil for
Saint Germain in McLean, uses an easy-to-follow
organization and a “tasty” color scheme.