A restaurant menu is more than just a list of dishes and drinks—it’s the map that guides every choice. Most guests only spend about 109 seconds reading a menu, so your categories and labels need to be effective.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to structure, optimize, and personalize your menu, so guests can quickly find the right items, and you can increase restaurant sales without changing a single recipe.
Key Takeaways
- Keep Menu Categories Tight to Speed Decisions: Keep core sections to 5–7 and fewer than 7 items per category to reduce overload and shorten time-to-order.
- Use Descriptive Names and Images to Drive Orders: Well-crafted names and menu descriptions can boost sales by up to 27%. Pair them with high-quality photos to further increase clicks and conversions—starting with your highest-margin items.
- Price Presentation to Increase Spend: Removing currency symbols reduces price salience and can increase guest spend by around 8%. Test this approach on both a print and digital restaurant menu.
- Feature a “Bestsellers” or “Chef’s Specials” Category: Highlighting signature, high-margin items in a dedicated first-position category with one standout photo can funnel attention and boost sales. Research shows featured items can see up to 30% more orders compared to standard placement.
- Bundle Smartly to Raise Check Size: Create a “Combos” or “Family Packs” category and add modifiers (sides, drinks, sauces) to lean into digital upselling—kiosk usage has been shown to increase an average check by about 8% in quick-service and 15% in fast-casual restaurants, thanks to consistent prompts and appealing visuals.
- Lead Each Category With Winners: A core menu engineering tactic is placing your most profitable items in the first few positions, as guests scan menus sequentially, which drives more sales.
- Pair Print and Mobile for Coverage: Offer a straightforward physical menu, along with a mobile-optimized menu featuring photos, to support discovery and online ordering.
What Are the Menu Categories?
Menu categories are the different sections of a restaurant menu that divide menu items into specific groups.
Examples of the most common menu categories include:
- Appetizers
- Entrées
- Sides
- Desserts
- Beverages
Menu categories enable customers to easily find the dishes they are looking for.
Moreover, menu categories assist restaurants in arranging their menu items in a structured and sensible manner, ensuring that all dishes are presented coherently and logically.
It’s also important to note that there can be several types of menus, including beverage menus (such as non-alcoholic beverage menus, wine lists, etc.), a dessert menu, a regular menu, and a prix fixe menu.
Most restaurants have one or two menus; however, the number of menus varies by restaurant.
For most concepts, a good rule of thumb is to stick to 5–7 core categories and keep fewer than 7 items per category to reduce choice overload. Studies on the “right amount of choice” show that guests prefer roughly 6 to 10 options depending on service style, with around 6 for quick service and 7 to 10 for fine dining.
What Are the Nine Categories in a Menu?
The number of a restaurant’s menu categories depends on factors such as cuisine type, dining style (fine dining, casual, fast food), and the restaurant’s target audience. That’s why the number of menu categories differs for various restaurants.
However, the most common menu categories for most restaurant menus are:
- Appetizers/Starters: Small servings provided before the main course.
- Entrées/Main Course: The meal’s focal point, typically larger and high in protein, often served with sides.
- Side Dishes: Accompany main courses to enhance flavor and texture.
- Salads: Versatile dishes made with leafy greens, serving as appetizers, sides, or main dishes.
- Soups: Hearty options to start a meal or serve as a light main course.
- Sandwiches and Wraps: Convenient meals that include bread, protein, vegetables, and condiments.
- Desserts: Sweet dishes enjoyed as the final course or standalone treats.
- Beverages: Includes both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options.
- Specials: Limited-time dishes that are not part of the “prix fixe menu” (static menu) and usually belong in a new category available for a limited time or on specific days, such as daily specials.
Benefits of Optimizing Menu Categories
A well-structured menu does more than look tidy. It guides guest choices, speeds up decision-making, and supports your bottom line. The infographic below provides a concise overview of the core benefits.
Use the quick benefits below as a checklist to put those gains into practice.
- Improved Sales: Clear sections make it easy to spotlight profit “stars,” showcase combos, and guide guests toward high-margin items. Descriptive menu labels can boost sales by up to 27%, so start with your highest-margin dishes.
- Better Customer Satisfaction: Logical categories reduce decision fatigue and help diners find what they want faster—especially when dietary and occasion-based sections (e.g., vegetarian, lunch) are clearly labeled and easy to spot. In family dining, 41% say a diverse selection of menu options is a top factor—good categorization lets you offer variety without overwhelm.
- Reduced Food Waste: Menu categories can play a crucial role in reducing food waste in restaurants. By categorizing menu items into specific sections, it becomes easier to control portion sizes, and by offering daily specials or du jour menus, restaurants can create dishes using abundant ingredients or nearing their freshness peak.
- Better Menu Pricing: Separating appetizers, mains, and desserts reflects different cost structures and ingredient needs, supporting menu pricing by setting clear price bands based on complexity and ingredient value.
- Improved Staff Efficiency: Clear categories (including cycle menus and prix fixe menus) organize kitchen workflow, streamline prep, and improve ingredient management during busy service.
Why Menu Categories Drive Revenue
Menu structure shapes how people decide. A clear hierarchy reduces friction, speeds choices, and nudges guests toward profitable items—online and in print.
- Less is more: When shoppers face 24 choices instead of six, their purchase rates drop to about 3% compared to 30%. Keep categories focused and limit sections to under seven items to make decisions easier and boost sales.
- People read menus sequentially: Eye-tracking research shows diners scan menus like a book (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), so placing profitable items and categories first increases the chance they’re noticed and ordered.
How to Display a Restaurant Menu
There are several ways to display your restaurant menu. We can distinguish the following:
- Traditional Paper Menus: À la carte menu and table d’hote menu are two examples of everyday paper menus that most restaurants offer. They’re easy to read, are at hand, and are often the same year-round.
- Digital Menu: Digital menus for restaurants are used in fast food restaurants and franchise restaurants, have an easy menu setup process, and are often created with a digital menu builder. They are usually available on a restaurant’s website or digital displays.
- QR Code Menu: This type of menu is usually available at each table and requires diners to scan the QR code menu to place their food orders directly from their phones.
- Menu Board: Great for presenting dishes creatively with pictures; however, they may not be suitable for all types of restaurants, such as fine dining establishments.
- Table Tent Cards: Small, freestanding cards placed on tables, typically made of sturdy plastic, to display specific offers or information.
- Chalkboard Menu: This menu type is displayed on a chalkboard and is a popular and flexible option for restaurants, cafés, and other food establishments. Chalkboard menus are ideal if you have a cycle menu that you regularly update with new prices or menu items, as it’s easy to do so.
- Menu Apps: These are mobile applications that provide customers with access to a restaurant’s menu through the restaurant’s mobile app and an integrated online ordering system, making it easy to browse dishes, customize orders, and place them conveniently from any device.
In the table below, you can see different menu types with information on when to use them, common pitfalls to avoid, and quick wins to make each type more effective.
| Menu type | Best for | Be careful with | Do this (quick wins) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional paper menus | Trust and relaxed browsing; brand feel | Reprint costs, hard to update, no media | Clear category headers; keep 5–7 core categories; less than 7 items per category; lead each category with 2–3 profit “stars.” |
| Digital menu (website / digital display) | Live updates; richer descriptions; photos | Slow pages; poor mobile layout; dated images | Mobile-optimize; add photos to top sellers; keep categories collapsible or clearly separated. |
| QR code menu | Fast updates at the table; no reprints | Small-text legibility; weak Wi-Fi | Larger text; short sections; Bestsellers/Combos at the top; lightweight images. |
| Menu board | QSR/fast casual; quick decisions | Limited space; glare/visibility | Short category names; 3–5 items per board section; large, legible prices; rotate promos seasonally. |
| Table tent cards | Promoting add-ons, desserts, drinks | Visual clutter if overused | One CTA per tent; feature 1–2 high-margin items; refresh monthly. |
| Chalkboard menu | Daily specials; cycle menus | Legibility; inconsistent handwriting | High contrast; simple category labels; post a quick photo to social daily. |
| Menu apps | Loyal guests; push promos; online ordering | Download friction; potential platform costs | Deep-link from site/QR; mirror categories across app/web; highlight bundles. |
Category Architecture for Your Online Ordering and Delivery App
If you offer online ordering from your website and via a delivery app, structure categories to help guests make quick decisions and increase their basket size while keeping the menu lean.
- Build the Top for Speed and Margin: Start with the Bestsellers category, then move on to Mains, Combos or Family Packs, followed by Sides, Desserts, and Drinks. Keep 5–7 top-level categories and fewer than seven items in each category.
- Use Time-of-Day Menus and Real-Time Availability: Create separate Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner menus; schedule when categories and items appear, and hide items when they are unavailable.
- Drive Higher-Order Value with Modifiers and Bundles: Offer only relevant modifiers (e.g., sizes, sauces, sides). Add a Family Packs or Combos category near the top and surface cross-sells on category pages and in the cart.
- Choose One Visual Standard: Either add high-quality photos to all dishes or use a clean, text-first menu with minimal icons. If you use photos for all items, keep image ratios consistent and compress for speed.
How to Create and Customize a Restaurant’s Online Menu
You don’t need to be a designer or programmer to create your restaurant’s online menu.
When you register with UpMenu, you can use menu design software to build your restaurant’s online menu.
Thanks to the menu management system, you can customize your menu at any time.
1. Choose a Customizable Menu Template
There is a wide selection of menu templates to choose from. You can select one and publish it on your restaurant website with a food ordering system.
2. Add and Personalize Your Restaurant Menu Categories
Once you choose your menu template, you can go to the ‘Menus’ tab and create a new menu with menu categories. You can personalize them by adding photos and menu category descriptions.
3. Add Menu Items to Menu Categories
After creating a menu section, you can add items to it by entering dish names and prices. You can also enhance each item with descriptions and photos.
Customizing your menu items is optional, but highly recommended. If you want to increase your restaurant’s sales, be sure to check out our food photography tips and learn how to write menu descriptions effectively.
How to Personalize Your Restaurant Menu Items
As I mentioned above, customizing a restaurant menu isn’t just about organizing categories; it’s also about optimizing individual menu items. Check out the tips below on how to personalize food items.
1. Label Your Menu Items
To enhance the visual appeal of your menu, consider adding labels to your menu items.
It is also helpful to inform your customers about specific dishes, such as whether they are vegan, gluten-free, or vegetarian.
In UpMenu, you can use ready-made menu item labels. You also have the option to create new ones.
2. Offer Different Menu Item Sizes
Depending on your restaurant’s offerings, another option to optimize your online menu is to offer different menu item sizes.
Firstly, you need to create sizes, and once you do this, you assign them to the menu items they refer to.
3. Provide Choices and Add-ons
To attract more customers to order online, consider expanding your ordering options.
In UpMenu, you can use an advanced module for managing modifiers to meet your customers’ expectations. You can offer different modifier configurations, for example:
- Adding free extras to products
- Replacement options for default ingredients
- Extras at different prices depending on the size
4. Add Recommendations and Upsells
In UpMenu, you can easily recommend selected products. To do this, navigate to the ‘Marketing’ tab and open the ‘Recommended Products’ section. There, you can choose whether a menu item should appear in Bestsellers, the Featured section, as a pop-up, or be displayed before checkout.
Restaurants using UpMenu report that built-in upselling tools increase order values by 51%, while mobile apps generate over 40% of restaurant revenue—showing how a well-designed digital menu drives sales.
5. Set Up Menu Items for Specific Days and Hours
Keep your menu up to date by making it available for specific days and hours. To do this, go to the ‘Menus’ tab on the side menu in the system, choose the menu you want to modify, and then edit the details of a given menu item.
In the ‘Advanced settings’, you can select times and dates when a dish is available. You can also hide it outside its availability hours.
6. Hide Menu Items From Your Menu
When you run out of a menu item or the ingredients necessary to prepare it, you can disable it.
Disabled products and/or menu categories will not be displayed on your restaurant’s website.
In UpMenu, you also have the option to disable the purchase of a menu item visible in the menu.
7. Enable Half-and-Half Items or Half Portions
To appeal to pizza lovers, enable a “half-order” feature that allows you to sell your products in half portions. This option is handy for pizzerias, allowing customers to select two halves of a pizza.
8. Allow Special Instructions
In most online ordering systems, customers can leave comments on their orders. In UpMenu, you can also let your customers leave a note on a menu item.
It streamlines the ordering process and helps customers personalize their orders.
9. Set Age Restrictions If Necessary
In UpMenu, you can set up age restrictions on the following:
- Menu items
- Menu categories
You do this in the menu item or menu category advanced settings. Thanks to that, customers will be asked to confirm their age when they enter a menu.
You can hide selected products or whole sections if there is no confirmation.
10. Manage Multiple Menus
You can manage many menus from different restaurants if you run a restaurant chain. UpMenu gives you the possibility to:
- Create one menu for all restaurants with the same pricing
- Create one menu for all restaurants with different pricing
- Create different menus for restaurants with different pricing
11. Promote Your Online Menu
To increase your restaurant’s sales, use different marketing strategies to promote it.
Check out this guide on restaurant marketing strategies and choose the ones that best suit your business requirements.
