The blunt answer:
Do Cafés in Hastings Really Need Professional Menu Design? Yes cafes really need professional menu designs, because it shows that you care for your image, meaning you also put that care into the food and beverages you offer to your customers.
Common mistakes I see on Café menus:
An in-house made menu, although usually made with good intentions, can easily be spotted by not only designers but also customers. Basic design rules can easily be broken for a more creative outcome, that is if you know what rules you’re breaking.
The most common menu mistakes I’ve personally seen are mismatched fonts, a messy layout, random styles of clipart and most times: no real branding. A menu can have all the mistakes mentioned before and still feel homely and quirky if it was done with good in-house intentions that adhered to branding guides, but if no branding guides were followed, it will just look bland.
Why a messy menu will make you lose money:
A customer’s first taste of your food is your menu.
Make it bland and the appetite will not go far, make it busy and the customer will feel overwhelmed with their choice, make it awkward and they’ll want to not spend much time in your establishment.
How does a messy menu actually lose money? Because you’re paying twice for it. You pay once because you’re not attracting customers then again because you’ll need someone to fix it, so why risk it?
What good design changes:
A well laid out menu reads better than a cluttered one. With a balanced look, the customer doesn’t have to worry about reading everything right or missing any items before ordering, the customer’s choice is lacking the stress a visual clutter can create. We have to also take in consideration how a customer orders, what does a customer think when they look at your menu? You might see your existing menu all the time but for a good number of customers it’s their first impression of your place.
If you have The desserts first, then the drinks and the food for example, this disrupts the unwritten rule of what is being consumed first, and before you think “psssh that’s obvious” I have seen it before with my own eyes.
A real world example where the menu redesign made a real difference:
When I worked on Quality Greek Food’s menu, I asked Kostas (the owner) why does he feel like he needs a redesign. He told me that although he only has very few items on his menu, the customers cannot at a glance understand that all wraps come with salad, and how many fillings and which ones can a wrap have. The information was already available on the menu, but it was not placed with a hungry customer’s best interest in mind. A hungry customer in a hurry most probably won’t spend time reading each word before wondering, which is why Kostas was getting overwhelmed with having to balance cooking the food and answering first time questions. Besides that, one of the most common questions was “what size are the wraps?”.
Our solution to these problems was to:
- Illustrate the wraps, and show them in relative proportions so the customers can understand the rough size differences between the single wrap, the double wrap and the box option.
- Arrange the text in a way that follows the ordering logic.
- Have the extras at the bottom of the menu, along with “Find us on Just Eat” something many did not know was an available option.
When you need us (and when you don’t)
Some cafes get by fine with a simple printed menu, maybe done in Word or Canva. Maybe the menu changes daily, maybe the vibe is minimalist, maybe the place is quirky and it is done on purpose. When that’s a deliberate choice, that was made with “that’s what we need” in mind and it works.
Then there are the “what do we need?” places. Those menus are the ones you can spot from a mile. Those menus are the ones that you’re being handed and your first thought is “Is this menu from somewhere else?”, with possibly overcrowded elements, hard to read, and doesn’t match the vibe of the place. Those kind of menus are made with either looks in mind and the function is neglected, or the other way around. This is a problem we can solve too, by balancing the two: a beautiful menu that functions well.
What we’ll do if you message us for a menu redesign:
When you email us “we need our menu redesigned” the very first thing we do is we ask you what does your current menu looks like and what would you like your redesigned menu to achieve. Your reply can range from “it just doesn’t vibe with our place” to “I’d like this and this and this and this”, we are happy to work with you no matter where you’re at.
What are the actual steps we do from start to finish:
A typical small café job follows our set process steps: you email us, we gather the information of what you’d like us to do and then we send a quote. If you’re happy with the quote we’re asking for the industry standard 50% deposit, after which we get to work a draft, check on the progress, do the revisions if any, and then once we are both happy with the work done and the rest 50% is sent, we package the files nicely ready to be sent to you. We are based in Hastings but we work with any business regardless of location.
We deliver final files and you can choose with whom and when to print your designs. If you’ve read this far, mention you’ve read the article when you get in touch and we’ll do 15 % off your quote. We love paying attention to details.