7 Restaurant Menu Design Before & After Examples from HotOperator

HotOperator has been designing restaurant menus for more than 30 years. To say we are expert at it is a bit of an understatement. Restaurant operators come to us from all over the country to have us help them become more famous. And the restaurant menu designs we create are design-engineered to do just that: make our clients more famous. Here are 7 Restaurant Menu Design Before & After Examples from HotOperator.

You want to sell food. But not just any food, you want to sell selective items from your menu over and over again. (The idea might be new to some, but you want to sell items that offer a higher plate contribution that are also popular). To do that, you need to be famous. (Sure, you can deny that, but the fact remains, if you want to sell a lot of specific food, you’ll need to have an audience, in other words, be famous.) And to become famous, you’ll need to stand out from the crowd. If you look at successful people, successful cars and successful businesses, you will notice that the ones that are top-of-mind are all famous.

Take a look, then let HotOperator call you for a FREE consultation.

Smoking Pig BBQ, San Jose, California.

Smoking Pig BBQ came to us for a menu makeover. This is what we started with and the layout next to it is what we came up with. We converted it from a 4-page menu to a larger, front-to-back design.

Bikini’s Sports Bar, Texas

This menu makeover for Bikini’s Sports Bar was designed to tone down the trashy look and make the menu a little more about the food. The process included changing up the background and adding product highlights as well as using more modest photos of the women. Start the process here.

The Nags Head Pub, Limassol, Cyprus

The Nags Head Pub menu originally was designed by the owner of the pub. A lot of restaurant owners do that, design their own restaurant menu. They think they are saving money, when in fact, they are walking away from income. After spending thousands for a restaurant building they think it’s a good idea to hack together a menu on their own. Probably the biggest mistake you can make in a restaurant. Seriously, you need to do this!

Pelon Tex-Mex Restaurant, Austin, Texas

This menu makeover was another example of a home-made menu from Pelon Tex-Mex. The word Pelon means hairless in Spanish. It also has another slang meaning. This new design captured the essence of the brand well. Do it, before you go bald!

The Original Mels, California & Nevada

HotOperator has been working with The Original Mels for more than 15 years. The menu they sent us was designed by a distributor and looked old and dated. Our menu makeover called for new illustrations and to better display the connection to the film by George Lucas, American Graffiti. This has been a fun brand to work on. I remember watching the film back in the 1970’s, and when Don Yakel called and asked if I would like to work on his menu I was thrilled. Are you ready to be thrilled with your menu?

C.W. Coops, Alliston, Ontario, Cananda

C.W. Coops was a loose chain of chicken wings restaurants.  The owner of the restaurant wanted to move away from the rest of the chain to sell more entrees, burgers and sandwiches. Under normal circumstances we would not advise that, but the owner told us that the franchise had dissolved, so she was wide open on direction. Get out of the coop and try something new.

Fatboys, Martin, Kentucky

Fatboys is a biker bar and restaurant Kentucky. The design we started with was put together by a staff member. We wanted to give the logo and illustration a more unique look that was less like the Harley Davidson logo. You know the feeling you get when you open a box of new menus that have been professionally designed and you just know it’s going to enhance your business like never before? That little bit of joy you feel when someone goes out of their way to tell you that you have a nice menu? If you’ve never had those feelings, you need to contact HotOperator. It’s a really great feeling. You owe it to yourself (and your customers). Give your customers something better!

 

Call For A Consultation (you’ve got nothing to loose, it’s FREE)

When you hire a designer, you’re paying him or her to spend time on your brand. The more you pay a designer, the more time this professional will spend. It’s as simple as that. All good professional designers are coin-operated. And to get the best design for your restaurant menu, it sometimes requires spending the right amount of time.

Here is a piece of general wisdom that most designers, photographers and illustrators use when they’re negotiating for a project: You can have it good, fast or cheap; pick any two. Which means you can have a project good and fast, but it probably won’t be cheap. And you can have a project cheap and good, but it may be a wait (mostly because you’ll have to wait in line). And finally, you can have it cheap and fast, but then the quality may suffer.

To see a complete list of HotOperator Services click here!

For a list of Off-The-Shelf products, click here!