Restaurant Menu Design: A Practical Guide for Printed and QR Menus
16 min read
Good restaurant menu design means a guest can find a dish, understand it and see its price in a few seconds, on paper or on a phone. Clear categories in the order people eat, short honest descriptions, readable type, prices without clutter and photos only where they help do more than any decorative trick.
This guide covers both printed menus and digital QR menus for restaurants and cafés in the Gulf and Jordan: how to order categories, how many dishes to list, how to write names and descriptions, when photos help, type sizes and contrast for phones, Arabic and English layout, price formatting, and a checklist to run before anything goes to the printer or goes live.
Restaurant menu design: what a good menu actually does
A menu has three jobs. It helps the guest decide, it tells them what each dish is and costs, and it steers attention toward the dishes you most want to sell. Design serves those jobs in that order. A beautiful menu that makes guests ask the waiter what half the dishes are has failed at the first two.
Much popular menu advice comes from print-era rules of thumb. The best known is the "sweet spot": the idea that eyes go first to the upper right of a two-page menu. An eye-tracking study by Sybil Yang, published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management and reported by Nation's Restaurant News, found the opposite with 25 participants: people read a two-page menu sequentially, like a book, left to right and down the page. Attention was lowest in the bottom corners. On the first pass, diners spent the most time on the mains, then went back to skim the other sections.
That is one small study, run in 2008, so treat it as a caution rather than a law. The practical lesson holds up: guests read menus in order, so the order you choose matters more than a supposed magic corner. On a phone that is even more true, because the screen is one long column read from the top.
| Goal | Printed menu | QR menu on a phone |
|---|---|---|
| Guest finds a dish fast | Clear sections, page headings, a contents strip on large menus | Category strip at the top, search, short categories |
| Guest understands the dish | One-line description under the name | The same, plus a photo when it adds information |
| Price is easy to read | Aligned after the description, no dotted leaders | Under or beside the name, same size every time |
| You can change it | Reprint, or stickers over old prices | Edit in the dashboard, live on the next scan |
Structure and category order
Start from how guests order, not from how the kitchen is organised. For most restaurants that is: starters or breakfast, mains, sides, desserts, drinks. A café usually leads with coffee and drinks because that is what most guests come for, then food, then sweets.
- List what you sell. Pull last month's sales from your POS or till and mark each dish as a best seller, a steady seller or a slow one.
- Group dishes into 5–9 categories a guest would recognise: "Grills", "Rice dishes", "Hot drinks", not "Chef's section" or "Station 2".
- Order categories by the meal, and inside each one put the dish you most want to sell in the first or second slot, where reading starts.
- Keep similar prices close. A single dish priced far above its neighbours draws a comparison; if it is a signature, give it its own short line or highlight instead.
- Put fixed information last: opening hours, Wi-Fi, service charge notes. Those are the corners people read least.
Category names should be short and concrete in both languages. If a category needs a sentence to explain it, split it or rename it. Deciding which dishes deserve the top slots is the job of menu engineering, which sorts every dish by popularity and profit; our menu engineering guide walks through it with a worked example.
How many items should a menu have?
There is no proven ideal number, and figures quoted online are mostly opinion. What is reliable is the trade-off: every extra dish adds stock, prep, waste and training, and makes the choice slower for the guest. Most menus improve when slow sellers that share no ingredients with anything else are cut.
| Type of place | Categories | Dishes per category |
|---|---|---|
| Specialty café | 4–6 | 4–10 |
| Casual restaurant | 5–8 | 5–10 |
| Grill or shawarma house | 4–7 | 4–8 |
| Breakfast and brunch spot | 4–6 | 5–10 |
If a category grows past about ten dishes, guests start scrolling past things on a phone. Split it ("Hot coffee" and "Iced coffee") or cut it. A dish that sells a handful of times a month and needs its own ingredient is the first candidate to go.
Writing dish names and descriptions
The name tells guests what they will get; the description tells them why they want it and answers the questions they would otherwise ask the waiter. Aim for one line of 8–15 words in English, covering the main ingredients, how it is cooked, what it comes with and anything a guest needs to know before ordering.
| Weak | Better |
|---|---|
| Chicken Special | Grilled chicken thighs, garlic sauce, pickles and fries |
| The Volcano | Volcano burger: beef patty, jalapeños, pepper jack, spicy mayo (hot) |
| Fresh Juice | Orange juice, squeezed to order, 350 ml |
| Kunafa | Kunafa: Nabulsi cheese in crisp shredded pastry, warm syrup, pistachio |
- Lead with the food, not adjectives. "Slow-cooked lamb shoulder" says more than "delicious, mouth-watering lamb".
- Keep a clever name only with a clear description. A name like "The Volcano" is fine if the next words say what it is.
- Put sizes and portions in numbers: 250 g, 350 ml, serves 2–3.
- Flag heat, nuts and other allergens in the same words on every dish, so guests learn to scan for them.
- Cut what is true of everything. If every dish is "freshly made", saying it on each line is noise.
In Saudi Arabia, menus also have to show calories and declare allergens, and more items are now covered. Our guide to Saudi menu requirements sets out what to add, and the free menu label generator writes the lines for you.
Photos: when they help and what makes a good one
Photos are not automatically good. Hou, Yang and Sun (2017) tested pictures against dish names: for dishes with plain, descriptive names, adding a picture improved guests' attitudes, willingness to pay and intention to buy. For dishes with ambiguous names, pictures helped only people who process information verbally; people who think more visually rated the ambiguously named dish lower when it had a picture.
In practice: a photo helps most when it shows what the words already promise, and it can backfire when it has to explain a vague name or when it is poor. On a printed menu photos take space you pay for. On a QR menu space is cheaper, but a bad photo is still worse than none.
| Use a photo for | Skip the photo for |
|---|---|
| Signature dishes and best sellers | Plain drinks: water, soft drinks, tea |
| Dishes a visitor may not know: mandi, machboos, kunafa | Sides and add-ons |
| Platters and sharing dishes, to show size | Dishes you cannot photograph well yet |
| Desserts and specialty drinks | Items that change daily |
What makes a menu photo good
- It is the real dish, plated the way the kitchen serves it. A stock photo sets an expectation the plate will not meet.
- Daylight or soft, even light, from a window or a large lamp, never the overhead kitchen light or a phone flash.
- The same angle and background across a category, so the menu looks like one set rather than a collage.
- Tight framing: the dish fills most of the frame, with nothing distracting at the edges.
- Square or 4:3 crops hold up best in phone layouts; check how the crop looks as a small thumbnail.
Typography and readability on phones
Most guests will read your menu on a phone, often in a dim room, sometimes at arm's length. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines list 17 pt as the default text size on iPhone and 11 pt as the minimum. A QR menu with 12 px descriptions in light grey is fighting the phone it runs on.
| Element | Phone (CSS px) | Printed menu |
|---|---|---|
| Category heading | 20–24 | 14–18 pt |
| Dish name | 17–18, bold or semibold | 11–13 pt, bold |
| Description | 15–16 | 9–11 pt |
| Price | Same size as the dish name | Same size as the dish name |
- Two typefaces at most, one for headings and one for everything else. A decorative script for dish names is the most common readability mistake.
- Line spacing around 1.4–1.6 for descriptions; Arabic needs the upper end because of its taller letter shapes.
- Left-aligned English and right-aligned Arabic, never centred paragraphs. Centred text is hard to scan line by line.
- Let text resize. WCAG 1.4.4 asks that text can be enlarged to 200% without losing content. Images of text are exempt from that rule, but they blur when enlarged, which is one more reason a menu built as a web page reads better than a photo of a printed one.
- Make taps easy. Category buttons and language switches need room: WCAG 2.5.8 sets a minimum target of 24 by 24 CSS pixels, and bigger is easier with a coffee in one hand.
Arabic and English layout
A bilingual menu has two good layouts and one common bad one. On paper, put the languages side by side, Arabic on the right and English on the left, so each dish sits on one line across. On a phone, show one language at a time at full width, with a switch at the top. The bad layout is the phone version of the print one: two languages squeezed into one narrow column, each at half size.
- The whole page flips in Arabic, not just the text: category strip, prices and icons move to mirror the English layout. The W3C guidance on right-to-left text recommends setting the direction on the page itself in the HTML rather than through styling alone.
- Pick an Arabic typeface designed for screens, with clear dots and open counters, and size it a step larger than the English if it reads small.
- Keep numbers consistent: one style of digits for the whole menu and the same price in both languages.
- Write both versions natively. Dish names, descriptions and tone should read as if written in that language first.
Transliteration, dish-by-dish wording and the right-to-left traps (numbers, units, punctuation) are covered in detail in our bilingual Arabic and English menu guide, so we won't repeat them here.
Price formatting without currency clutter
Price format affects spending a little. In a field study at the Culinary Institute of America's restaurant, Yang, Kimes and Sessarego found that guests given menus with numerals only ("20") spent significantly more than those whose menus showed a dollar sign or prices written in words. The authors note the effect was small next to party size and time at the table, and that it may apply only to that restaurant at lunch.
The design lesson is simpler than the psychology: a currency sign on every line adds clutter without adding information. State it once and let the numbers be clean.
| Avoid | Use instead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| SAR 32.00 on every line | 32, with "Prices in SAR, VAT included" at the top | Less noise, same information |
| Dotted lines from the name to the price | The price right after the description | Leaders invite reading down a price column |
| A column of prices along the right edge | Prices next to each dish | Guests compare dishes, not prices |
| 32.5 next to 18.75 | The same decimals throughout | Mixed formats look careless |
| Price written smaller to hide it | The same size as the dish name | Guests notice, and it reads as evasive |
Two local notes. In Saudi Arabia the number on the menu should be the final price including VAT, and the new riyal sign does not render on every phone yet; both are covered in Saudi menu requirements. The UAE has a new dirham sign too, unveiled by the Central Bank on 27 March 2025. If you use either sign, check it on a few ordinary phones first. How to set prices in the first place, from food cost to the final number, is in our menu pricing guide.
Accessibility, contrast and colour
A menu that older guests or guests with weaker eyesight cannot read loses orders quietly. The web accessibility standard gives clear, testable numbers: WCAG 1.4.3 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (about 24 px, or 18.5 px bold). Use the same targets for print.
- Use brand colours for accents, not for reading. Your colours belong in the header, category strip and highlights; descriptions stay in a dark, plain colour.
- Dark text on a light background is the safest choice for long menus. Light grey descriptions on white, gold on cream and text over photos are the usual failures.
- Never put text over a busy photo. If a category image carries its name, darken the image or place the text on a solid band.
- Do not rely on colour alone. WCAG 1.4.1 says colour must not be the only way information is shown, so a red dot for "spicy" also needs a word or an icon.
- Test in real conditions: open the menu on a phone with brightness at half, in the dining room at night, and read the descriptions.
- Matte paper for print. Gloss reflects overhead lights and makes the menu hard to read from some seats.
Printed menu or QR menu: what changes
The design rules above apply to both. What changes is how you lay things out and how often you can change them.
| Decision | Printed | QR menu |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | Columns, spreads, fixed page size | One column, read top to bottom |
| Finding a dish | Page headings | Category strip and search |
| Price changes | Reprint or stickers | Edit once, live on the next scan |
| Sold-out dishes | Tell the guest at the table | Hide the dish until it is back |
| Languages | Side by side on the page | One at a time with a switch |
Many restaurants keep both: a printed menu for guests who prefer paper and a QR code on every table. Print the code large enough to scan from a seated position, leave a plain margin around it and test it on several phones before printing a batch. Our free QR code generator makes print-ready PNG and SVG files.
Pre-print and pre-launch checklist
Run this list before you send files to the printer or put the QR code on tables. Ask someone who did not write the menu to do it.
- Every dish has a name, a one-line description and a price, in both languages.
- Prices match the POS or till, and both languages show the same numbers.
- The currency appears once, with the VAT and service charge note if you have one.
- Allergens, heat levels and sizes use the same words and icons on every dish.
- In Saudi Arabia, calories and the other required lines are on every item.
- No category has more than about ten dishes; none is empty.
- Body text is at least 15–16 px on a phone or 9 pt in print, with 4.5:1 contrast.
- Photos are of your real dishes, in the same style within each category.
- The Arabic version mirrors the layout and reads right to left, including the category strip.
- Spelling checked by a native speaker of each language, from your market.
- The QR code has been scanned on at least one iPhone and one Android phone, from a seated position.
- Printer's bleed and resolution requirements confirmed, and a printed proof read on paper.
Designing your menu in AlaMenu
AlaMenu handles the phone side of this for you. Every dish carries its own Arabic and English name and description, with the price entered once so it cannot drift between languages. Guests switch language with one tap, and the Arabic menu renders right to left. Each dish and each category can have a photo, your logo and colours sit at the top, categories sit in a strip for quick jumps, and search covers dish names and descriptions in both languages. Mark a dish unavailable and it disappears from the menu until you switch it back on.
The Free plan covers one location with up to 10 dishes per category, and paid plans remove the dish limit (see pricing). The same page can take table bookings if you want them. See how it looks on our demo menu, read more about the QR menu, or follow the step-by-step guide to creating a free QR menu.
Questions
What makes a good restaurant menu design?
Clear categories in the order people eat, a short list of dishes, one-line descriptions that say what each dish is, readable type with strong contrast, prices shown the same way everywhere, and photos only of real dishes where they add information.
How many items should a restaurant menu have?
There is no proven ideal number. As a starting point, 5–8 categories with up to about ten dishes each works for most casual restaurants and cafés. Cut slow sellers that need their own ingredients before adding anything new.
Should I put a currency sign next to every price?
No. State the currency once at the top, for example "Prices in SAR, VAT included", and show plain numbers. A Cornell study found guests spent more with numerals-only prices, and it is cleaner either way.
Should a menu have photos of every dish?
No. Photos help most for signature dishes, dishes visitors may not know and desserts, and they only help if they are good photos of the real dish. Research suggests a picture can backfire when it has to explain a vague dish name.
What font size should a digital menu use?
Around 17–18 px for dish names and 15–16 px for descriptions on a phone, with at least 4.5:1 contrast against the background. Apple lists 17 pt as the default and 11 pt as the minimum text size on iPhone.
How do I design an Arabic and English menu?
In print, put the languages side by side with Arabic on the right. On a phone, show one language at a time at full width with a switch, and flip the whole layout for Arabic. Our bilingual menu guide covers the wording.
What app can I use to design a restaurant menu?
For print, a template tool such as Canva (over 16,000 menu templates) or a designer who knows print files. For phones, a QR menu builder that makes a real menu page from your dishes and prices, not an upload of the print file.
Can I use my printed menu design as a QR menu?
You can link a PDF to a QR code, but guests will have to pinch and zoom. A menu built as a mobile web page reads better, can be searched and can be changed without reprinting. Keep the PDF for printing.
Sources
- Nation's Restaurant News: Study counters prevailing restaurant menu theories (Sybil Yang's eye-tracking study)
- Hou, Yang and Sun, Do pictures help? The effects of pictures and food names on menu evaluations (International Journal of Hospitality Management, 2017)
- Yang, Kimes and Sessarego, $ or Dollars: Effects of Menu-price Formats on Restaurant Checks (Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, 2009)
- Apple Human Interface Guidelines: Typography
- W3C, WCAG 2.2: Understanding 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
- W3C, WCAG 2.2: Understanding 1.4.1 Use of Color
- W3C, WCAG 2.2: Understanding 1.4.4 Resize Text
- W3C, WCAG 2.2: Understanding 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum)
- W3C: Structural markup and right-to-left text in HTML
- UAE Government portal: the UAE national currency and the new dirham symbol
- Canva: menu templates
Try it on your own menu
AlaMenu's Free plan includes the bilingual QR menu, table bookings on a floor plan and WhatsApp confirmations. No card required.
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