Have you ever sat down at a restaurant, browsed through their menu and felt increasingly frustrated? Perhaps you were overwhelmed by too many options. Or several food names/descriptions were incoherent and confusing. Or you were running errands under the hot scorching sun, needed an iced cold beverage but couldn’t find the damn drink list.
Restaurant owners; your hipster customers, we’re afraid, may be experiencing these problems and more.
A well designed menu stimulates appetite, guides your customers to make more satisfying choices, and discreetly upsells, without your server disrupting the table with an unwarranted “we have a promotion today”. In contrast, a poorly designed menu at worst downsells and discourages your customers to dine at your hipster cafe.
Want to identify potential problems with your menu and fix them? Keep reading below.
Poorly Designed Menu
This is an example of a poorly designed menu. (Don’t worry, it’s fake but based on a real menu from our hipster cafe Bang Bang.)
Characteristics of a poorly designed menu:
- Illegible font due to small size, poor contrast or unusual style
- Grammar and spelling mistakes
- Extra spaces between letters or words
- Limited background space (aka negative space)
- Tight, narrow margins and line spacing (space between each line of text in a paragraph)
- Inconsistent or distracting colours, text or images
- Unappealing names and descriptions
- Unappealing photos
- Unclear sections
- Unusual pricing
You may feel some of these characteristics are minor. However, if several of these problems exist in a menu, it may break the flow and concentration of your customers, prompting them to analyse your menu instead of ordering food.
Optimised Menu For Cambodian Hipsters
Use large clear photos of Instagrammable foods throughout the menu. Generally speaking, Cambodians appreciate appetising food photos more than names and descriptions, and may order based on photos alone.
Highlight Cambodian comfort foods such as fried rice, noodles, salads, soups, grilled/steamed fish and meats. Cambodians often order what’s familiar to them and may shy away from food that’s considered too foreign. If your hipster cafe offers dinner options, keep in mind that a typical Cambodian family dinner consists of steamed white rice, a soup dish, a vegetable dish, a meat/fish dish, spicy/salty condiments, and fresh fruits for dessert.
Highlight deals, discounts, free items, and all-you-can-eat options. Cambodians value ‘value’, often seeking the best bang for their buck in terms of quantity or volume.
Highlight couple or group meal options. Cambodians seldom dine alone unless it’s breakfast, they’re in a hurry to somewhere, on a break, working on their laptops or studying. Outside of work and school, they prefer to dine with their partners, colleagues, friends and family.
Laminated paper menus, matte photo paper menus and glossy bristol board menus are acceptable to Cambodians. Professional food photography, book-style menus are ideal.
When including both Khmer and English languages, prioritise Khmer and place it above or left-adjacent to the English translation. (By law, public road and business signage must follow this format.) If you disregard this suggestion, Cambodians may feel excluded and hesitant to enter or dine at your hipster cafe.
Numbered and coded menu items are acceptable, even desirable, to Cambodians. Some Cambodians prefer to order by calling numbers or codes instead of food names (“I want to order number 3 and 5”). Use this to your advantage. When your servers are taking customer orders, they can ease the process by writing numbers or codes of menu items on their order pads.
Optimised Menu For English-Speaking Hipsters
Generally speaking, Anglophones (English, Americans, Australians, etc) are attracted to words in menus that are related to naturalness, ethicality, and sustainability: fresh, raw, natural, wild, preservative-free, 100%, organic, local, grassfed, free range, cage-free, etc.
Other desired words are dietary: vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, keto, etc. Use separate sections OR a legend and symbols to indicate dietary menu items, if relevant.
Use noteworthy adjectives in food descriptions or ingredient lists:
- naturalness, ethicality, and sustainability (natural palm sugar, 100% local honey, free range eggs)
- food preparation techniques (poached eggs, caramelised onions, sous vide steak, herb infused olive oil)
- visceral flavour attributes (buttery croissant, savoury pie, crispy pork crackling)
- cultivars, varieties, species, breeds (frisée lettuce, oyster mushroom, wagyu beef)
- locations or regions (Battambang oranges, Kampot black pepper, Kep crabs)
- nationalities or demonyms (Thai basil, French butter, Australian beef)
- extended length of time (mature cheddar, dry-aged beef, slow-cooked pork ribs, 12-hour marinated chicken)
- self-made (homemade pickles, in-house smoked fish)
Indicate spiciness in foods (‘white people’ are notorious in Cambodia for complaining about spiciness, even when they expect it).
Indicate allergens (soy, nuts, shellfish, etc) if they exist in foods where it’s generally not expected. Example: peanuts in baked goods because of cross contamination.
Use photos sparingly or omit them completely in your menu. If you do, use photos of your most profitable best sellers.
Paper on clipboard menus and glossy bristol board menus are acceptable to Anglophones. Consider higher quality, durable papers such as cardstock.
Numbered and coded menu items in hipster cafes are frowned upon by Anglophones. They’re associated with fast food chain restaurants and may be perceived as lower class or poorer quality.
Other Tips
Most cafe menus follow this format; deviate at your peril:
- Coffee/Drinks or Specialties (if applicable)
- Starters/Appetisers/Sides
- Mains
- Desserts
- Drinks (if you don’t have the drink list in the front, place it in the back; if lengthy, the drink list can also be a separate menu)
Display prices in Khmer riel, not US dollars. Since 2020, Cambodia has started the process of phasing out small-denomination US currency ($1, $2 and $5 bills), aiming to reduce the country’s dependence on the US dollar.
Use price anchoring, a psychological tactic to persuade customers to order specific menu items.
Choose menu fonts wisely—clear and legible. Keep in mind, they add personality to your brand.
Limit menu options. If too many, your customers will develop analysis paralysis.
Avoid naming menu items with similar sounds to minimise confusion. At our hipster cafe Bang Bang, we initially had two menu items named “Brekkie Bagel” and “Brekkie Set”. Especially during busy rush hours, this resulted in confusion and errors with customer orders.