5 Tips to Creating an Effective Menu Board
2015-04-08 | Custom Printing , Custom Signs
One of your restaurant’s most effective marketing tools is often suspended right over your front counter. Having a readable and enticing menu board is one of the best ways to get customers to spend their money on your most profitable offerings. Here are 5 best practices to ensure you are getting the most out of your restaurant’s first impression.
#1: Choose Legible Typefaces and Fonts
Remember: the MOST important part of a menu board is to make sure that your customers can read it. Light green or yellow on a dark background is very likely to induce squints, making the selection process more frustrating. That cool curly typeface might look great online, but may be completely unreadable when placed on the menu over your counter. Opt for thick, clear lines, and high contrast between type and background colors.
#2: Center-Align Your Menu Items
Lining up all your offerings on the left side of the board might seem like an organized choice, but it also might be taking a toll on sales. That way, customers naturally scan your offerings according to price rather than reading through to find what they like the best. When you center-align the items in each section of your menu, customers are more likely to spend a few extra dollars on the item that really sounds good to them rather than order according to what is least expensive.
#3: Organize Your Offerings into Categories
A long list of menu items can overwhelm the eye. Make it easier for your customers to find what they’re hungry for by finding a system to divide your products. Figure out some kind of organizing principle, whether by type of food (burritos vs. tacos), time of day one eats the food (lunch vs. dinner), or another method unique to your restaurant.
#4: Showcase Drool-Worthy Food Photos
There’s something about a well-lit, high definition food-photo that can get even someone with extreme self-control to salivate. If you have a particularly photogenic or popular piece, including a picture on your menu (printed from eGenoa’s high-resolution printer) is a strategic way to feature it.
#5: Emphasize Your Specials with Boxes
Have special items on your menu that you are known for? Have an item that you would like to see blow up in popularity? Draw your customer’s eye to them by placing a text box around them. Usually, it will be one of the first things your customer considers.
Maximize the selling power of your menus by enlisting the talent of our eGenoa design professionals when you put these tips into practice. We can design and install indoor signage including menu boards that can help bump up sales according to your branding principles and specifications.
