Online menu for a cafe: a trend or a tool to increase sales?

Online menu for a cafe: a trend or a tool to increase sales?

More and more fast food cafes and restaurants offer visitors not classic menus printed on paper, but an online version. This is much more convenient, because a person can view each dish in the usual format, see its description and photo. The online menu can be attributed to the trends, which are a great way to increase the status of the institution and increase sales.

The new menu will be one of the features of your restaurant. It is enough to specify new prices or add dishes to the list on the appropriate tab, after which the menu will be instantly updated.

This option is convenient not only for visitors, but also for waiters. They won't have to apologize to their clients if a position is not available – it will be immediately removed from the menu, only actual dishes will remain in it.

How to create your restaurant website?

A restaurant website is the best marketing option. On the pages, future visitors will see the design of the premises, study reviews and prices. The main thing on such a site – this is the menu. Photos of dishes should be made with high quality and beautifully, so that at one glance the future client's appetite will increase.

If the concept of your establishment involves takeaway dishes, then you need to introduce a convenient payment system. The client will be able to pay for the order and order delivery in order to enjoy the best dishes from the chef without leaving home.

To develop a new site, you can allocate a certain budget and hire specialists. You will need to come up with a plan and describe each element, which will later be made into reality. And it seems that everything is very simple. But the reality is that when a customer communicates with specialists, the problem of misunderstanding very often arises. And tasks that look simple on the surface, in fact, take a huge amount of effort, time and money. Therefore, creating a website for a restaurant is the way for those who lack the capabilities of template solutions.

An alternative – use online constructors. Benefits of – in their simplicity:

  • using a visual editor, you can quickly create the desired site;
  • easy to add a bonus system and organize sales online;
  • The site is managed in a few clicks, so anyone on your team can handle the task.

Constructors do not require specific skills and a large budget. Visual editors have a user-friendly interface and are great for creating single-page or multi-page sites. But they are not without drawbacks either. Assembling a website in the constructor is not as easy as it is written in advertising. You still need to read the documentation and understand the functions of the visual editor. Many modern editors are so advanced that it is desirable to complete training courses to fully work with them.

Regardless of how the site is created, it needs to be filled with texts and photos. This is important not only for site visitors, but also for promotion in search engines. Stolen pictures and non-unique texts, at best, will not affect the position in the search results, and in the worst case, the site's rating will be lowered. 

Filling the site with unique content on your own can take years. And it often drags on. And the result usually does not meet expectations, simply because on the customer's side, filling the site turns into someone else's additional work. Employees don't like doing their job. Because of this, they do not want to delve into all the intricacies of the process, they are in a hurry, they quickly lose interest and the site remains unfinished. This is how bad and inefficient websites are created.

Based on the negative experience of a huge number of entrepreneurs, Food Digital Service does not offer a menu builder. The service has 7 templates to choose from, developed on the basis of many years of experience in developing restaurant websites. That is why to create an online menu, the client only needs a menu layout in the form of any file. We will do the rest ourselves. Thus, our service will allow you to develop your business, and not suffer with a visual website editor. If in the future you want to create a full-fledged website for a cafe, the online menu is very simple and will organically fit into any design.

How to design a menu in a cafe?

The basis of a good cafe menu – its convenience. Visitors will be able to quickly find a suitable dish, and the waiters – promptly place an order and transfer it to the chefs. Do not put off the design of the menu for the last minutes before the opening of the institution. The design of the paper or online version should match the interior of the cafe, so you should choose the right style for writing and designing each page.

The menu should indicate the weight of each dish, its description and how it is served.

If your establishment belongs to the fast food format and involves a large flow of visitors, then fast service is the main feature of the format. The peculiarity of such service is that most of the service gestures are made by the guests themselves. From the question "what will I eat" before receiving the order, the visitor of your establishment conducts a service in the format of "self-service". In this case, the menu should be as informative, understandable and accessible to every visitor at any time as possible. This is especially important when the institution has just opened and due to its novelty and marketing activities there is a surge in attendance.Just in this short period of time there is a chance to create that very first impression with the audience. When it's delicious, it's fast and you don't have to wait long for the waiter or stand in line to get closer to the sign above the counter and read the menu.

Our approach to creating an online menu allows you to get a ready-made system in just 2-3 working days that allows you to process the entire flow of visitors due to the fact that orders will go directly to the kitchen. Therefore, every visitor will be satisfied.

What is a touchless menu?

Contactless menu – this is another useful innovation that you can make for the guests of your restaurant. An online page with a list of main dishes can be placed on the institution's website or a separate tab can be created that will open after scanning the code. Alternative – creating a pdf file with a menu. It is no less convenient to view dishes in it, and one of the features can only be called the inability to immediately leave an order. 

You can choose a ready-made menu for your cafe on the site and supplement it with the necessary positions, choose the right design for the style of the establishment. Features of the contactless menu are as follows:

 

Safety and hygiene Visitors won't have to change paper versions Ability to list top selling dishes The best dishes will be displayed in the top – to the very beginning of the list in the menu Less waiting The customer will be able to select items and place an order, after which information about this will appear in the kitchen Budget saving You can create a ready-made menu using a template without spending money on printing a paper version

 

In this menu, you can make a separate tab for reviews or provide the ability to leave comments on each dish. So visitors will be able to focus on the opinions of other customers and choose the best positions in your restaurant.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a rapid development of delivery services. And the presence of a contactless menu for many businessmen has become a necessity. At the same time, the transition of the classic business to the digital format has opened up huge opportunities for the owners of catering establishments to increase sales many times over by expanding the coverage area of ​​each outlet and each restaurant of the network. Therefore, the Food Digital Service online menu system is essentially an online store that can be easily integrated with any delivery service.

How to use the contactless menu?

First, you need to create a menu of your own restaurant online to add comfort while visiting your establishment. A two-dimensional code will be placed on each table, by scanning which a person will be taken to a page with an online menu for a cafe. You can choose the right dishes without waiting for the waiter. The code can also be applied to other advertising media – coasters, leaflets, napkins for table setting. 

Near the printed code, it is recommended to make a small instruction for guests. It could be as simple as "Scan the code to open the menu." To do this, you can use a regular camera on your phone or open an application with a scanner. After that, a link will appear on the smartphone screen, which must be clicked, and a menu will open in front of the visitor.

Many restaurants post a Quick Response code on the wall in front of the restaurant. Alternative – counter with laminated paper menu. So customers can see prices and offered dishes without crossing the threshold of coffee. The contactless menu will be a great addition to the traditional one: visitors will be able to view the list of dishes on the screen of their smartphone, and bookmark the open page in their mobile browser.

The online menu is also presented on the touch screen, which is located near the ordering area. You need to select the desired dish, pay for the order and pick it up in the issuing area.

Now more and more users prefer to order online on social networks, so having a link to such a menu will make their life much easier. They will be able to explore the list of dishes and popular events in a particular institution in order to visit it if they wish.

Where can I make a cafe menu?

To make a similar version of the cafe menu, you can use any online menu builder. There are many ready-made website templates on the Internet that will perfectly match the design of your restaurant.

Use the search engine to filter options by color, theme, or specific layout. You don't have to stop at one cafe menu template – you can combine parts to create the best option.Онлайн меню food digital service

However, at the stage of opening a restaurant, creating an online version of the menu on your own can lead to difficulties, loss of customers due to inconvenient functionality or pages that do not open. If you want to significantly save your own time, you should contact us – to Food Digital Service. We have been creating such sites for many years, so we know how important it is to avoid mistakes at the start. We use simple and proven solutions that help increase attendance and do not bother your employees to do tasks they are not used to.

The advantages of an online restaurant menu over a paper one

An interactive menu is one of the options to increase sales in your restaurant. But many visitors do not lose the opportunity to chat with the waiter. Therefore, the online menu becomes an excellent tool in his work. Each client will be able to carefully study the proposed list of dishes, then choose the desired position and, if desired, consult with the waiter. 

The description of the online menu for the restaurant will include:

  • calories;
  • ingredients (to avoid allergens on the plate);
  • weight of the dish. 

If you have any questions, you can contact the waiter.

If a dish is on the stop list, it is much easier to update the online version of the menu, visitors will not be offered something that is not in the kitchen.

Another benefit of – Significant time savings for clients. Throughput in the institution will increase significantly. You will notice how quickly the gross profit increases at each point where the new approach is introduced. Notifying waiters about the order will become much easier, and saving on printing will be a great way to save money. Innovation is always well appreciated by visitors, so don't miss the opportunity to improve your own cafe!

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