5 Things You Never Want to See in Restaurant Menu Design

Comic Sans font. You do not want this font anywhere near your menu. It’s reserved specifically for elementary school teacher newsletters. And there’s a documentary against it.

Paryrus font. This font is the stereotype of stereotypes for Greek restaurants. (There’s even a blog about the overuse of this font.) If you’re truly Greek and serve a mean gyro, you deserve something more creative and easier to read.

Dollar signs. Want to scare off your customers from the higher-profit items? Just attach a dollar sign to the price. There’s even a study to back this up. Read it right here.

Clipart. If you’re using the Microsoft Windows clipart collection to illustrate your menu, stop right now.

Too many pictures. When you have too many pictures on a menu, the customer doesn't know where to look or what to eat. Your menu and your servers should guide the customer on what to eat, not leave them hanging.

Did I miss anything you would never want to see in restaurant menu design?

Tags: bad, customers, design, guiding, marketing, menu, restaurant, your

6 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of FohBoh to add comments!

Join FohBoh

Comment by Becky Hendriksen on April 27, 2011 at 2:12pm: Great article, Amanda! Two more things that popped into our heads: lose aligned pricing and a pixelated logo on menus!

Comment by Becky Hendriksen on April 27, 2011 at 2:01pm: Great article, Amanda! Two things popped to mind- aligned pricing, and a pixelated logo.

Comment by Amanda Brandon on April 25, 2011 at 12:26pm: Great additions, Adam! Thanks for adding to the list.

Non-Operator Comment by Adam Palmer on April 25, 2011 at 7:56am: I couldn't agree more with the Comic Sans and Paryus fonts. Very trite.

You should also add that having more than one title font and one body font is a definite NO NO.

Also, Learn to kern! It's amazing how much more customers understand the ordering process when items are clean and organized. A little typography can go a long way.

Comment by Eric Rodriguez on April 23, 2011 at 7:58pm: Great points! In particular the dollar signs point is really interesting. I didn't know about that but it makes a lot of sense after perusing the Cornell study.

Speaking of the papyrus font - there's a pretty funny comic about it on The Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website