Guides

Menu design tips for phone menus

A menu that works on paper often falls apart on a phone. The screen is narrow, guests scroll instead of scanning a page, and the light at the table is rarely good. These tips are for the phone version of your menu.

Sections first

Break the menu into five to eight sections named the way guests think: Breakfast, Burgers, Sides, Kids, Drinks. Put the sections people come for at the top. On a phone, the order of sections matters more than on paper because nobody sees the bottom without scrolling.

Short dish names

“Carnitas tacos” beats “Grandma Rosa’s famous slow-braised carnitas street tacos”. Keep the name to what a guest would say when ordering. The story goes in the description.

One line of description

Say what is in it, especially anything a guest might not expect: the sauce, the cheese, the heat. Skip adjectives like “delicious” and “mouth-watering”. Every guest scrolls past them.

Prices

• Line prices up on the right so they are easy to compare.
• Pick one style and stick to it: “12” or “12.00”, not both.
• For two sizes, write both: “6 / 9”, with the sizes in the description.
• Keep prices current. A QR menu with old prices is worse than a paper one with pen corrections.

Tags instead of footnotes

Paper menus use little symbols and a key at the bottom. On a phone the key is a long scroll away. Short labels next to each dish (Vegan, Gluten, Spicy) are easier, and a filter that hides dishes with a given allergen is easier still. See how to label allergens.

What to leave out

• Pop-ups, sign-up boxes and cookie walls before the menu.
• Huge photos that make the page slow on restaurant Wi-Fi.
• Text inside images, which can’t be zoomed or read by screen readers.
• Anything that needs an app.

Check it in your own dining room

Sit at a table, scan your own code and try to order something specific in under 30 seconds. If you can’t, a guest can’t either.