Restaurant Menus (Brochures & Flyers)

The most useful thing a print shop can tell a restaurant is this: stop ordering a year of menus.

Food costs move, dishes come off, suppliers change, and a laminated menu from last spring with three items crossed out in pen tells every guest something you would rather it did not. Printing a few hundred at a time costs more per menu and far less per year, because you are not throwing away eight hundred obsolete ones every time the kitchen changes.

Same-day production is available here for exactly that reason. A menu change on Tuesday can be on the tables Wednesday.

A custom size is available if your menu covers or holders need something specific.

A menu is handled by every guest, all evening, with wet hands and food on the table. Text weight paper does not survive that — it goes soft at the corners on the first night and looks tired by the weekend.

For a menu that stays on the tables, use cardstock: 100 lb premium or heavier, and 120 lb or 130 lb thick card for a main menu you want to last. For inserts you will reprint weekly, a lighter stock is a perfectly sensible economy.

On finish: gloss and satin wipe clean, which on a dining table is the practical answer. Matte is uncoated — it reads beautifully, it photographs well, and it marks the moment a glass sweats on it. Plenty of restaurants take matte anyway because it suits the room, and simply accept a shorter life and reprint more often. That is a reasonable trade as long as you make it deliberately.

Prices without leader dots. A column of dotted lines running to a column of prices invites guests to read down the price column and choose the cheapest thing. Set the price quietly after the description instead.

Drop the currency sign. "$14.00" reads as a cost. "14" reads as a number. It is a small thing and it is one of the few menu conventions with real evidence behind it.

Descriptions earn their space. A dish with a short, specific description sells better than a dish with only a name — but only if the description says something. Where it came from, how it is cooked, what is in it.

Group tightly. Short sections with clear headings. A guest scanning a menu is looking for a category first and a dish second.

Allergens and legal notices. Whatever you carry, keep it consistent across every version of the menu. That is easier when you reprint often and harder when there are four generations of menu in the building.

Restaurants and cafes around the Galleria and along the Tollway. Bars with drinks lists that change seasonally. Coffee shops with counter menus. Catering companies with event menus. Hotels with room service and banquet menus. Food trucks and popups. Private clubs and country clubs with rotating menus.

If you also need something on the tables, table tents are the natural pairing — specials and desserts belong there rather than cluttering the main menu.