Every restaurant, café and bar has one, and many hotels, hostels and bed&breakfasts do too: a menu. But way too often I encounter menus that are boring, bland and not really selling anything. BIG MISTAKE! Your menu is a great tool to sell the items you want to sell the most. And the way to do this is through design.

Highlighting your chef’s specials, guiding the reader to your most chosen dishes and giving them drink recommendations are just a few tricks. In this post I like to show you some creative menu designs that I came across lately as I was working on a new menu for one of my clients. Hopefully you find them as inspiring as I did. Need a new menu yourself? Then get in touch. 

Coffee, Not Coffee. Now if that’s isn’t a clear hint on what you’re all about I don’t know what is. I love how straightforward the titles in this menu are.

A colored background, classy, grey, with a few minimalistic illustrative elements. This menu is very well-balanced. The titles are clear, however I’m missing guiding points to specials, recommended combinations or something like that.

I definitely believe in the power of folded menus. They give you, the reader, the feeling there’s “more” to discover. You get to turn the menu around, open it, close it and so on. A folded menu often gives you the opportunity to tell the customer more about your brand. Your history, vision, mission. So use the extra space and add some in-depth information!

Last but not least, two pretty illustrative menus with very similar colors. I wanted to show these since I believe illustrations work extremely well: they help people to visualize their meals or to get excited about certain dishes. Of course, only do this when it fits your brand. If you have a very minimalistic style, then only use minimalistic, line illustrations. No doodles.

Enjoyed this inspiration?

Then stay tuned for future posts! All posts on the Tremento blog are meant specifically for hospitality brands – some of them, of course, are valid for any kind of brand, but all of them are written with you guys (hotels, restaurants, cafés, hostels, etc.) in mind. We will always try to provide you with good examples and ideas. Need some more advice? Then get in touch! Hit the contact button in the menu or leave a comment below.