How to design a menu: layout, pricing and type

A menu is read twice. Once standing at the counter or sitting down, in a hurry, looking for the thing the person already half decided to order, and once more slowly when they cannot find it. Good menu design serves the first reading and rescues the second. It has less to do with fonts than with order, price placement and a few pieces of wording that Australian rules expect you to get right.

Start with sections, in the order people order

Before any layout, write the list. Group the dishes the way the kitchen serves them and the way customers think: breakfast, lunch, sides, sweets, drinks. Resist clever section names. A heading that says “From the pan” makes a customer read every item to find out whether eggs are in it.

Then decide what does not belong on the main menu. Specials change weekly, group packages have their own logic, and drinks often fill a page by themselves. Each of those can be a separate sheet, which keeps the main menu stable and readable.

The cafe menu flyer example shows the split for one fictional cafe, Fern & Fig on Fenwick Lane. The full menu prints on A4 for the door and holds every dish from seeded toast at $7 to green shakshuka at $19 in one table. A photo specials board pulls four of those dishes onto a grid for the week. A third sheet turns the same kitchen into three packages for groups, at $32, $55 and $28 a head.

Give prices their own column

The most useful single decision on a menu is a price column. On the Fern & Fig full menu every price sits in its own column beside the dish and its notes, from $4.50 for the batch brew to $19 for the shakshuka. A customer scanning for a number never has to read a description to find it, and a customer reading descriptions is not interrupted by numbers.

Write every price the same way. If one is “$14” and another is “14.50” and a third is “fourteen”, the column stops being a column.

Australian price display rules shape the figure itself. The ACCC says businesses must display a total price as a single figure, including taxes and unavoidable fees, and that if more than one price is displayed for an item, the business must sell it at the lowest price or stop selling it until the price is corrected. That second rule is why specials belong on their own sheet. A dish at $19 on the menu and $16 on a board creates two displayed prices, and the lower one wins.

Keep descriptions short and useful

Long dish copy is what makes a menu look crowded. On the example, each line names two or three ingredients, such as silverbeet, feta and warm flatbread, and stops. That is enough to tell someone what arrives and whether they will like it.

The line that is worth adding is about allergens. Food Standards Australia New Zealand says food that is not required to carry a label, such as food provided at a cafe or takeaway, must still have allergen declarations either displayed in connection with the food or provided to the purchaser on request. A short line such as “Please tell staff about any allergy before ordering” at the foot of the menu, backed by staff who can answer accurately, is the minimum. Marking dishes is clearer, but only if the marks stay correct when the recipe changes.

Surcharges, kilojoules and other wording

Two pieces of wording have specific rules, and both need a place in the layout before you start.

Surcharges. NSW Fair Trading guidance says a restaurant or cafe that charges a surcharge on certain days does not need a separate menu or price column. Instead the menu must include words stating that a surcharge of a given percentage applies on the specified days, and those words must be at least as prominent as the most prominent price. A footnote in small grey type does not meet that. Other states have their own guidance, so check yours.

Kilojoules. The NSW Food Authority requires standard food outlets, chains trading under a shared name with 20 or more outlets in NSW or 50 or more nationally, to display the average energy content of standard food items and the statement that the average adult daily energy intake is 8,700 kJ. An independent cafe is not a standard food outlet.

Type size and the takeaway version

Set type for the worst reading conditions the menu will meet: a dim table, a window in afternoon glare, a customer without their glasses. Prices and dish names should be the largest text after the section headings, and descriptions can be a step smaller but never faint.

A takeaway menu is a different document. It is read at home or on a fridge door, with no server to explain anything, so it needs fewer dishes, the opening hours, the address and one clear way to order. The salon price list flyer example makes the same distinction for a hair salon: a photo sheet at reception with four services, and a full table for the client who books by the time they have. Its line “Every price includes the finish” answers the one question that causes arguments, which is the equivalent of saying whether bread comes with the soup.

For per kilogram or per portion pricing, the weekly deals flyer example puts a unit price beside every pack price, which is how a butcher or deli lets customers compare two tray sizes at a glance.

The table below lists the layout rules in one place, with the reason for each.

Common mistakes

Prices lined up with dots. Leader dots make the eye travel along a line of noise. A clean column does the same job.

A second price for the same dish. Specials boards and old menus left on tables create two displayed prices.

Descriptions that sell rather than describe. “Famous”, “legendary” and “delicious” take space and tell nobody anything about what arrives on the plate.

Colour everywhere. One deep colour carrying the headings and table rules, as the Fern & Fig menu does with a single forest green, reads calmer than four.

Edge to edge backgrounds on a home printer. A full bleed colour needs a print shop that trims, and the export has no bleed. What bleed is explains when it matters. What else belongs on a single printed sheet is in what to put on a flyer.

Build it

The menu and price list maker starts from the list you already have. Type or paste it into the prompt, or attach the menu as a PDF or photo, up to five files at 25 MB each, which needs the Starter plan. The words and prices are read out of the file; nothing visual is copied. Generation is told never to invent prices, dates or phone numbers, so a price you did not supply should not appear, and any gap is yours to fill before printing. Table cells are all left aligned, with column widths you can drag. A4 portrait is 1240 by 1754 pixels and exports at 2480 by 3508. For a front and back menu, the multi page flyer tutorial shows how to add a second page, and the PDF export includes every page.