print to-go menus – Page 3 – BlockbusterPrint.com Blog

Top Tips when You Print Pizza Menus

If your assigned task is to print pizza menus, how do you go about it? How can you make sure that you will not just finish the assignment, but succeed in letting the menu speak for your food business as well? Read on to find out.

Things to Remember when You Print Carry Out Menus

Be it pizza, Chinese, sandwiches, or other types of food, your dine-in and takeout menus are an important ingredient in running your food business. It’s the first thing that hungry diners will look at when they walk into your restaurant, so it says a lot about what you are as a food establishment. To get started, here are some key things to remember when printing out your takeout menu:

Know what drives food sales in the first place.

For sit-down restaurants or diners, almost 80% of the sales comes from your menu – the waiting staff will sell the rest to the customers. For takeout fare, the number is definitely more than that – so you need to make sure that when you print to go menus, it has all your bestsellers and the quick-to-prepare but profitable dishes.

Make sure that there’s a good balance of text and images.

Look at the online menus of the most popular fast food chains. There’s a good balance between text and image. If you must include food pictures, leave enough white space around each photo to still make it look interesting.

Be aware of the ‘hot spots’ in a menu.

The upper right hand corner of the menu is one of the hotspots – although after scanning the whole page, people read menus as they would the page of a book. Keep this in mind when deciding how to layout the page.

Skip the dollar signs and columns.

You don’t want people to feel the pinch of what they’re buying in their pockets – so skip the currency sign. Also, 9.99 looks less expensive than 10.00 even though there’s very little difference between the two amounts, so use such a strategy when pricing your food items. It also pays to use boxes and a more unique layout instead of traditional columns, with the prices arranged from the most to the least expensive.

Know how to distribute menus to boost sales.

Finally, your takeout menu should not just be placed inside the restaurant or the takeout counter. People passing by may want to learn what your prices or pizza flavors are without having to walk into the restaurant – so keep several copies outside for them to pick out. You can also distribute a copy of your takeout menu to suppliers, in every delivery order, in public bulletin boards, and anywhere or any event where there is plenty of foot traffic.

Select a Color Postcard Printing Service Provider and Use it for Direct Mail Marketing!

Choosing a color postcard printing service provider is something that you have to do if you want to take advantage of the benefits of direct mail marketing. Despite the emergence of digital marketing techniques, the old school way of sending postcards by mail is actually still effective. As long as you know how to do it effectively, you can save a lot of money on advertising costs by going for custom postcard printing.

Mistakes to Avoid when Launching a Direct Mail Marketing Campaign

Of course, just as it is when doing any business-related task, you must know exactly what you’re doing when it comes to direct mail marketing. A good way to get started in this type of marketing campaign is to know which mistakes to avoid in the first place.

Don’t make your postcards look like junk mail.

Millenials most probably do not check their physical mail and if they do, they know how to recognize junk mail from those that would give them something that’s of value. No matter which age bracket your target market is, you must know how to not make your postcards look like junk mail. What’s good about postcards is that they are not encased in envelopes so the message can be read right away. For the design of the postcard, make sure to get the right mix between images and text to get your marketing message right across.

Don’t use cheesy marketing lines.

If you’re in the real estate business, for example, avoid using cheesy and overused marketing lines. Multiple exclamation points, stock images, unreliable graphics, clip-art style images, or a postcard that’s filled with too much text – so much so that it’s hard to read – these are the other things to avoid.

Don’t be inconsistent.

The key to an effective direct mail marketing campaign is consistency. You cannot send a postcard to a customer once – and not ever do it again. After your initial contact, make sure to send postcards during promotional events, as a holiday greeting card, or when you have something of value to offer the customer.

Don’t use a non-targeted list.

Using the real estate example mentioned earlier, you will not send these marketing postcards to students who do not have money to pay for a house just yet. If you want to get a list of the families or individuals in a specific area who are interested in buying or selling property, look for a stock broker to get a valid list from. This way, you would know that the print postcards online that you will order will be delivered to the right mailbox.

Don’t forget to include a call to action.

Lastly, make sure to include a call to action. To set your postcards apart from the rest, you can use it as a discount coupon or as a business card – so always indicate your contact information. An effective call to action must make a reader want to get in touch with your company for more information.

Avoid these mistakes so that you can have a truly effective print marketing campaign with the help of simple postcards delivered through direct mail.

Make Customers Salivate with the Design of Your Print Takeout Menu

If you have a food business, it is a must for you to print takeout menu, a menu for walk-in diners, and an online menu for your website. When designing all of these, you should consider the type of fare you are offering, the interiors of your restaurant, your logo, your target market, and a host of other factors. Basically, it all boils down to designing your menus in such a way that it will appeal to the eyes, mind, and palate of your target diners.

Factors to Consider when Designing Your Menu

So what are these factors that you must consider when designing your menu? Whether you are having a soft opening for your restaurant or if you are relaunching or rebranding your food business, here are the tips that you must remember during the process of designing the menu:

The placement of the food items

Make the menu easy to read, but not too conventional. If you’re a fine dining restaurant, present the dishes in your menu in such a way that it can be read like a book, from the upper left hand corner going to the right, up then down. A reader will most likely scan the menu first, then read it like a book. The prime spots are usually the top third of the page, as well as the center.

The images or illustrations

If you are including photos in your menu, make sure that the dishes are professionally shot. Otherwise, the menu would look cheap. Also invest in good quality print to go menus. It’s easy to recognize if a menu was printed on a desktop computer printer because these look cheap – offset printing and professional photography is the way to go. You can also use illustrations, just make sure that the drawings blend well with the color and the typography of the menu.

The font, color, and overall design of the menu

If you are not including images or illustrations in the menu, go for bold typography and unique colors. Skip the currency sign. If you must include the prices on the menu, make the numbers a lighter shade than the text or the name of the dish – so that the eyes will be drawn away from the figures. To highlight a bestselling dish, use boxes or lines to separate it from all the other items on the menu. If you’re a diner, for instance, organize the menu by separating the starters from the salads, sandwiches, and drinks. When you print carry out menus, only include the quick-to-make and the most profitable dishes. This way, the customer won’t get frustrated with a long wait.

All in all, make sure that the overall design of your menu is something that will make hungry diners look forward to the delicious tastes that will hit their palate.

Print Takeout Menu: Key Takeaways for Restaurant Owners

When you print takeout menu, you are not just enhancing a customer’s overall dining experience but you are also utilizing a savvy marketing tool. Imagine a hungry diner who walked into your restaurant without having any idea about the kind of food that you’re serving. Once you hand over the menu, that serves as a marketing tool because you want the menu to sell your restaurant’s dishes. If you have a menu that’s difficult to read, is filled with too much text or have too-small images that make the page look crowded, do you think that the hunger of the customer will be appeased by simply looking at the menu? Not necessarily. This is the exactly the reason why it is important to print carry out menus and dine in menus that reflect the theme of the fare you’re serving inside your dining establishment.

Tips for Restaurant Owners when Designing a Menu

Remember that creating and designing a menu are entirely different things. Creating a menu involves choosing the theme of your restaurant, which dishes you are going to serve, and which ingredients you are going to focus on. Designing a menu is done when you are finished selecting and naming your dishes. For example, you’re a pizzeria and you named your pizzas after the days of the week, your menu would consist of seven different pizza flavors, drinks, and perhaps a few side dishes.

How are you going to effectively design your print to go menus with such a theme? Here are a few tips:

Again, use the menu as a marketing tool. With the pizzeria example, how are you going to describe the pizza flavors in such a way that customers would know what they’re getting – but there is still a surprise element to the taste, or maybe the ingredients used? Achieve that delicate balance between having well-lit, mouth-watering images and text or dish descriptions that tease the mind and the palate.
For your takeout menu, make sure that the dishes are profitable and quick to prepare. Otherwise, indicate the approximate number of minutes that they need to wait before you can get that dish out of the kitchen. For pizzas, add three to five minutes to the time it takes to bake the pizza so that the customers will feel happy when their waiting time is actually cut short.
Research shows that customers read menus as they would a book, so there’s actually no ‘sweet spot’ where you can put a bestselling dish that will attract the eyes like a magnet. Feature your bestsellers on the upper left or right hand corner of the menu page to get maximum results.

Follow these tips when designing a menu and watch the profits of your food business grow!

Print Takeout Menu: Tips for Getting Started

How can you go about the task to print takeout menu? If you are in the food industry, the first thing that would entice customers to try out what your kitchen has to offer is the menu. No matter how mouth-watering your dishes may look on the plate, if a hungry diner pores over a less-than-appealing menu, they still would not know what to order. What’s worse is that they might walk straight out because they did not find any item that’s appealing from your menu.

This is precisely the reason why it’s important to know how to print carry out menus and menus for your dine-in customers. A new customer would have no idea about your dishes once they walk into your restaurant or dining establishment. A menu resolves that, so you must have it designed in such a way that it appeals to their palate. Here are a few tips for getting started on your menu design:

Think of theme of your restaurant and use that as a starting point.

If you are a fine dining establishment, the menu should be designed elegantly. For mom-and-pop restaurants or casual dining establishments, the design of the menu should be equally casual. If you are offering trendy dishes, think of a menu design that will appeal to the “in” crowd. Apply the same principle for your print to go menus – just make sure that the dishes featured are the ones that are quick to make, and are most profitable.

Know how to deliciously describe your dishes.

If your bestselling dish is juicy fried chicken with half a dozen spices, describe it in such a way that it will entice diners to try out what makes your dish special or different from all the other similar recipes in the market. For a casual menu, it is best to use everyday language while for fine dining takeout fare, use more elegant words to appeal to the more high-end market.

Use suitable colors.

If you’re selling customized cupcakes or doughnuts, use pastel or bright colors and insert cute design elements on the menu. Use darker, more elegant colors if you are offering more expensive fare.

By knowing how to appeal to the tastes of your target market, you can effectively design a menu – whether it’s for customers dining in or those who want to grab their food to go.

Where to Distribute Your To Go Menus

To go menus make for a great advertising material. If you don’t have dishes that customers can order to go yet, you are not tapping the maximum earning potential of your food business. People these days are always up and about and they want almost everything to be instantaneous. As such, they’d want to have delicious dishes that they can order quickly, to go.

Now, if you would like to print to go menus, you must look for a reliable printing service provider. You can actually take your pick from digital or offset printing. There are many digital printing services which make use of desktop printers, while there is a lesser number of offset printing presses available. Quality-wise, however, offset printing is far superior. If you want to print carry out menus, it’s better to go for offset printing – the investment will be well worth it in the end.

Next, how and where should you distribute these to-go menus? Here’s a quick list:

Place a to-go menu right outside your restaurant.

People get intimidated or shy at the thought of entering a restaurant without actually ordering anything. But what if they want to order something to go in the future? To make it easier for people to check out your food products and the prices, leave a basket with copies of your to-go menu right outside the restaurant. This way, they won’t have to ask the staff for a copy – and they won’t get one if they are not interested to buy. This is a win-win situation for the business owner and the customer.

Have your own staff distribute them to their personal and professional network.

Your waiters, dishwashers, chef, and all the other staff in your food business would have their own network of contacts. Families, friends, acquaintances from school, neighbors – the contacts of your employees will multiply and before you know it, your business’ popularity will soar simply through word of mouth and print advertising. Having your own staff distribute menus to the people they know is a very effective way of promoting your dining establishment.

Distribute to go menus to your suppliers, business partners, and other people you interact with.

When running a restaurant, you will deal with suppliers and other business owners on a regular basis. When doing a transaction, make sure to include a copy of your to-go menu to help spread the word about your business.

Include a copy of your menu on every to go food package.

Finally, you can broaden the reach of your to-go menu advertising by including one in every food package, doggie bag, pizza box, etc. Knowing where and how to distribute your to-go menu will help boost the sales of your food business.

Elements of a Great Design for To Go Menus

To go menus do not just add to the overall dining experience of a customer, but restaurant owners can also use them as an advertising tool. If you have a pizzeria, for example, you can print to go menus and distribute them to customers or suppliers. The more widespread the distribution is, the more well-known your food products would be. However, you do need to take into account that the menu should be cleverly designed. If the layout of your menu is a graphic designer’s nightmare, it will appear equally confusing and not visually appealing to your customers. Here, we will take a look at the design elements of an effective to go menu:

The ‘sweet spot’ on the menu.

Designers or layout artists of traditional menus think that the ‘sweet spot’ on a menu is the upper right hand corner – so this is where they place their bestsellers or the most profitable items. But new studies suggest that customers actually scan menus like they would a book – starting from the top left corner. As such, if you want your bestselling dishes to be the first one that a customer reads, place it on this exact spot.

The sectioning of the menu.

Next, make the menu easy to read by dividing it into logical sections. If you’re a fine dining restaurant and you would like to print carry out menus, divide it into sections so that the appetizers, main dishes, and desserts can be easily seen.

The prices on the menu.

People go to restaurants to eat and when you put the dollar sign before the price, they will feel the impact of the food that they’re ordering on their wallets. To avoid this, most menus are designed without the currency sign. You can also use a pricing strategy with cents – instead of 10.00, put a 9.95 tag price next to a dish so that customers will feel that they are not paying the full price for the item.

If you want to highlight a food item, you can change the font, use color or boxes. Match the look of your menu with the décor or the logo of your dining establishment. By following these tips, you can give your profit a boost with the help of a well-designed takeout menu.

Takeout Menu Printing: What You Need to Know

If you are in the food business, one of the many tasks that you need to undertake is takeout menu printing. There are a lot of hungry patrons who are always on the go and do not have time for a sit-down lunch or dinner – so they would always opt to buy food to go. If this is the case and you don’t have print to-go menus, then you are definitely missing out on the chance to earn more profit.

Quick Facts about To-Go Menus

The good news is that there are many companies like BlockbusterPrint.com which specializes in creating print to go menus and other printed products that you can use to advertise your business. If you have no idea about how you can have to go menus printed, here are a few quick facts about it:

To go menus must look visually appealing.

Imagine a couple walking into your restaurant who are so hungry. They’re in a hurry to have food served on their table, so they select the first thing that they see on the menu. If your menu is not that visually appealing, they can easily walk out and find another dining establishment. Why? Because you did not offer them anything enticing to look at in the first place. Most restaurant patrons rely on pictures when ordering food, so your go to menu must visually appeal to their taste buds.

The highlighted dishes should give customers an idea about the type of food you’re serving.

If you are offering all-day breakfast, the photo of a waffle with butter slathered in gooey syrup should be highlighted on the menu. If you are running a fine dining restaurant, a sophisticated plate with a mouth-watering, colorful dish can be featured. If you’re offering fusion dishes, an array of tempting dishes can take front and center on the menu. The same thing holds true for your takeout menu, which must offer delicious dishes and the convenience of ordering them to go.

There are different sizes and folding types available.

Companies like BlockbusterPrint.com offers menu printing services and for their line of takeout menus, there are four sizes and ten folding options to choose from. To make your to go menu visually arresting, full color HD printing is available.

When it comes to the food business, your menu plays a huge part in presenting your products to your customers, so make sure that it’s printed and presented the best way possible.

Takeout Menu Printing: Which Dishes Should I Highlight?

If you’re planning to scrimp on takeout menu printing, you might want to think twice. In the restaurant business, dine in and to-go menus play a huge part in selling the food that you’re offering to your restaurant or diner patrons. Hungry diners will rely on your menu when deciding which dishes to order, so you should know which items to highlight. That’s what we will learn more about here.

Before that, however, let us take a quick look at the role that menus play when it comes to selling food items in restaurants:

A menu can help boost sales in your restaurant. If you have new dishes to offer to your customers, you can update your menu and highlight what’s new. This way, you can retain the loyalty of your existing customers and attract new ones.
A menu can increase the frequency of orders, especially if it is printed in such a way that is visually appealing.
To go menus will give customers who are in a hurry or who don’t want to dine in a chance to sample your dishes in a convenient manner.

Tips for Choosing which Dishes to Highlight in Takeout Menu Printing

Next, what are the things that you need to remember when it comes to choosing the dishes to highlight in your print to go menus? Here are the top tips:

Choose professional-looking photos of your most popular dishes.

Visual appeal should be your primary consideration when having menus printed out – whether it’s for inside the restaurant or to go ordering. When you print to-go menus, make sure that the dishes pictured are a feast – both for the eyes and the taste buds.

Highlight the dishes which are quick to make.

People order items to go because they don’t have the time for a sit-down dinner. This is precisely why you should only highlight and include dishes which are quick to make in your takeout menu. Just imagine how frustrated a hungry diner would get if it takes you thirty minutes or so to prepare a popular dish!

Edit your to go menu in such a way that only the quick-to-make and profitable dishes are featured.

Lastly, edit your takeout menu by choosing only the dishes which are quick and easy to make, and are profitable. For example, egg rolls which are prepared beforehand takes only a few minutes to deep-fry, so it’s a popular order in Chinese takeout. The ingredients aren’t that expensive, either – so they end up being really lucrative for the restaurant owner.

By following these tips, you can have a takeout menu that will boost the sales in your food establishment.