Restaurant menu design: method, mandatory information and layout

How do you create a restaurant menu?

Menus are often built from the heart: dishes you love to cook, ones you have seen elsewhere, ones guests ask for. That is a good start. But a menu also has to hold up in the kitchen on a Saturday night, stay profitable when supplier prices rise and be readable in thirty seconds.

This guide is part of our Run a restaurant series. Pricing each dish is covered in food cost and menu pricing, so we do not repeat it here. The legal points below apply to restaurants in France.

How many dishes should a menu have?

There is no magic number. The right number depends on three things: the size of your kitchen, how many people are on shift and the space in your fridges. Ask yourself these questions before adding a dish:

• Can this dish go out on time on a Saturday night, with the usual team?
• Are its ingredients used in other dishes too? An ingredient used in a single dish often ends up in the bin.
• Does it have a clear place on the menu (a meat, a fish, a vegetarian dish) or does it duplicate another?
• Can we make it the same way, with the same portion, every day?

A short menu has many advantages: fewer items to order, fresher produce, less waste, a team that masters every plate and guests who choose faster. Many restaurants pair a short menu with a daily specials board: it uses up a delivery, tests a dish and gives guests a reason to come back.

A simple structure

Think about children and special diets too if your guests ask for them. A well-made vegetarian dish stops a whole table from choosing another restaurant.

How do you decide which dishes to keep? Menu engineering

Menu engineering means ranking your dishes on two criteria: how many sell and how much each earns in cash (price excluding VAT minus food cost). So you need two numbers per dish: how many sold in a month (your till gives it) and the gross margin per plate (your recipe card gives it, see the guide to food cost).

Do this at each menu change, or at least twice a year. It avoids two common mistakes: keeping out of habit a dish nobody orders, and dropping a low-margin dish that brings in guests who then order a starter, a dessert and wine.

To go further on selling, see our guide to increasing average spend.

How do you write dish names and descriptions?

A good dish name says what is on the plate, with no jargon and no promise you cannot keep. Guests should be able to picture the dish. A simple method: the main ingredient, how it is cooked, the side, then one detail that makes people want it (the origin, the producer, a house sauce).

[Main ingredient] [cooking method], [side], [sauce or detail]

Example: Roast pollock fillet, celeriac purée, herb butter

Example: Seven-hour slow-cooked lamb shoulder, seasonal vegetables, reduced jus

Example: Creamy mushroom risotto, parmesan, hazelnut oil

• Short sentences, simple words, no abbreviations.
• No empty adjectives (“delicious”, “tasty”): describe the cooking or the product instead.
• Honest words: “homemade”, “fresh”, “local” must match reality.
• The same name on the printed menu, online and on the specials board.
• A translation if you welcome visitors, checked by someone who speaks the language.

Should you write “fait maison” (homemade)?

In France, the “fait maison” wording and logo are optional but strictly framed. A dish can carry them if it is cooked on site from raw products, meaning fresh or uncooked, unprocessed ingredients. Some processed products are allowed (bread, cheese, pasta, cured meats except terrines and pâtés, stocks and fumets if guests are told in writing…), but a dish made only from these cannot carry the wording. If only some dishes are homemade, the logo or wording goes next to each one; if all are, you can say so once on the menu. Misuse can be penalised as a misleading commercial practice.

What must a restaurant menu show in France?

Here are the rules listed by Service Public Entreprendre, the French government’s business information site, for restaurants in France. They cover the menu, but also what is displayed outside and the bill.

• Outside display: the menu or the day’s menu is displayed outside during service, at least from 11.30 am for lunch and from 6 pm for dinner.
• Drinks: the list of drinks and their prices is displayed inside.
• Prices: including taxes and service. Prices on the bill must match the displayed prices.
• Meat origin: the origin of poultry, beef, pork and lamb is shown on the menu or on a notice, including for meat that is already cooked. If the exact origin is unknown, “origine UE” (EU) or “origine hors UE” (non-EU) is accepted.
• Allergens: for non-prepacked food, allergen information is on the menu or in a book available to guests.
• Water: guests are told they can ask for free drinking water.

The 14 allergens and a template to copy are in our guide to the allergen matrix. These rules change: check the official page listed in the sources before printing your menu. If you trade outside France, check your own local rules.

How do you lay out a readable menu?

A menu is read quickly, often in dim light and sometimes without glasses. Readability comes before decoration.

• A simple, large enough font, in black or a dark colour on a light background.
• Clearly separated sections, in the order of the meal.
• Prices aligned, without dot leaders that lead the eye to the cheapest price.
• Few pages: one or two sides for food, a separate drinks list.
• The dishes you want to sell placed at the top of each section or in a small box.
• Icons (vegetarian, homemade, allergens) explained in a key.
• A clean menu: a stained menu corrected in pen gives a poor image of the kitchen.

Plan for updates from the start. If your prices change often, print a simple menu you can redo yourself, or use a board for the dishes that rotate.

Should you put your menu online and on Google?

Yes. Before choosing a restaurant, many guests look at the menu and prices on their phone. A menu they cannot find, or a blurry photo of last year’s menu, can send them next door. Three places matter:

• Your website: a real page with the menu text, not only a heavy PDF that is hard to open on a phone.
• Your Google listing: a link to the menu, and the dishes if you wish. See our guide to adding your menu to Google.
• A QR code on the tables: handy for foreign guests and for allergens, on top of the printed menu and the outside display, which remain mandatory in France.

The golden rule: one version of the menu. When a price changes, it changes everywhere on the same day.

The restaurant owner’s guide

Open, run, grow: each stage has its full guide and detailed guides, with their reading time.

This guide for your trade

• Restaurants
• Bars
• Website for bars and cafés

Go further

• Run a restaurant: the complete guide
• Food cost and menu pricing
• Allergen matrix template
• Add your menu to your Google listing
• Restaurant QR menu: the complete guide
• The Voxtya QR menu