You can design a menu by yourself with the following steps below:

• Step 1: Prepare your lists of menu

Before having your menu visually designed, you need to decide on the key elements, which is the food and drink that you are going to serve the customers first.

• Step 2: Understand the concept

Since the menu is essential for the business to gain customers’ hearts by delivering its own personality, designers must understand the concept of the restaurant and figure out what to show in the menu to satisfy that target.

• Step 3: Choose the types of menu

There are 5 common types of the menu, each of them serves a different purpose depending on how the restaurant itself wants to serve its food. Choose one and it will help you with the structure of the whole menu.

• Step 4: Design the menu

Remember that if the menu has more than one page, make sure that all the pages will have a consistent design guideline with logo, color scheme, fonts/typography, mood, and tone.

• Step 5: Take references

Keep improving the visual element of the menu by asking for feedback from people around you and your loyal customers if you have run the restaurant for a while now.

• Step 6: Introduce the menu

The final step is to introduce your newly-made menu to the customers and watch it do the job. Good luck!

There are many types of menu used around the world that each of them serves a different purpose from one another. And these four (04) types mentioned below are the most popular:

1. À La Carte menu: Which means “According to the menu” in English, is the menu that lists the names and prices of every dish offered by the restaurant. This is known as the most used menu type in many restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, and places that usually serve meals like breakfast, brunch, lunch ,and dinner on a daily basis.
2. Table d’Hote menu: Or “Fix Price”, is the type of menu that offers sets of full-meal courses which include the starter, main dishes, and dessert, instead of separate dishes like the À La Carte one above. This type of menu is preferred the most widely when planning parties at weddings, buffets, private parties, etc.
3. Du Jour menu: This is the type of menu that offers customers special/signature dishes every day, or on occasions. As a result, the menu will be changed by day/occasion and is a great way for the chef to introduce new dishes to customers. Besides, since people tend to like to be surprised, the way Du Jour offers them new dishes every day will make them keep coming back for more.
4. Static menu: This is the type of menu that arranges their food and drink in categories, like soup, main dishes, starters, salads, etc., and is often seen at places like coffee shops, fast-food restaurants and restaurants. It is such an ideal way to provide customers with a clear range of choices in terms of dishes and prices that the Static menu is now the second most popular menu type in the world.

Besides the 04 menu types above, there is also one type called “Cycle menu”, which serves the same set of menus all over again after a period of time. That period can be every day, every week, every month, and more. This menu is often used in food service operations that are specified in providing meals for schools, companies, etc.

The first and foremost purpose of a menu is to inform customers about what food and drink the restaurant is offering. Most of the time, in not-so-high class restaurants, customers are also expected to see the price of each dish as well.

Nowadays, besides showing the name of the dishes, a menu also has the purpose of providing customers with unique selling points of the place, bringing the signature atmosphere out to them, and making them keep coming back for more.

No matter what occasion the menu is designed for, or what purpose it is supposed to serve, a menu is the first thing for the restaurant to communicate with the customers about the food first before they actually get to eat the dishes. That’s why the more the restaurant invests in their menu design, the better the marketing strategy will be.

Menu planning is the process of deciding on what food and drink will be served, the portions, the types of food, and also the time of serving. Menu planning is made following 6 principles :

• Adequacy: Make sure the menu is giving enough nutrients for the eaters.
• Balance: Make sure all the major food groups are present in the meal, including fruits, vegetables, grains, protein food, and dairy.
• Moderation: Make sure the meals serve enough but not too much intake of some food.
• Calorie control: Make sure the food in the menu will serve enough and appropriate amount of energy for the people who it serves.
• Variety: Make sure the meal serves a variety of food instead of the same food all the time.
• Nourishment: Make sure the meal brings joy and a positive mood to eaters with a nice look and eating experience.

Since most restaurants will not be able to attract customers without a menu, menu planning is absolutely essential in terms of both gaining the customers’ hearts and serving marketing purposes, except for those places with unique styles of serving food. Menu planning not only provides the restaurant a menu to inform their customers about what they are serving, but also the most important fundamental for other processes to go well as planned, such as:

• It helps a business keep things under their control in terms of preparing the ingredients, the types of food, the number of dishes, the cooking process, and the time of serving food to the customers, etc;
• It helps keep you updated with what needs to be done and for how long it needs to be done;
• It helps you prepare all the food and ingredients on time with their best quality as possible;
• It helps you save time cooking a wide range of food in a long period of time of a day;
• It helps keep your budget in check and under control;
• It helps you avoid any unnecessary waste by keeping the amount of ingredients in check with the amount of food that will be served;
• It helps you to have an immediate backup in case any issues related to lacking ingredients happen.