Designing Your Menu

I like Gordon Ramsay. However, in one of the episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, he said that if a restaurant has pictures on its menu, run out the door. I honestly don't know why!

Now I am saying this because I like putting photos in menu. That is depending on your restaurant type.

As a general rule, if it's a casual dining or family type restaurant, I put pictures. For fine dining ones, no pictures allowed. Why? For me, pictures, can put the "casual" impression. So if you have a fine dining restaurant, please don't put any pictures.

In the Philippines and most restaurants I have been to in Asia, most menu books have pictures. Just look at Friday's menu!

Now, please make sure that you think about the following when designing your menu.

One, if you decide to use photos, use them sparingly and make sure that the pictures do not drown out the items in your menu.

Two, use good photos. Make sure that the lighting and colors are great and that the pictures help sell the food, not make them look icky or something.

Three, if possible, please use descriptions. Works better than photos sometimes.

Four, arrange your menu list in a way that the dishes are given their own spotlight and your high profit margin dishes are highlighted. Start with appetizers, soup, main dishes and so forth.

Fifth, use your inside front cover to feature specials.

Lastly, a simple, picture-less menu should be clean-looking and arranged in a way that it gives a great impresson of the food to come.