Overview
What this menu has to do
A restaurant menu does two jobs at once: it helps a guest decide quickly, and it tells your kitchen and floor staff exactly what is being sold. The structure below is the one most full-service restaurants settle on, because it follows the order guests actually read in.
Treat it as a starting skeleton. Keep the four categories, adjust the item counts to your kitchen, and write each dish once — name, description, price, allergens — so the same entry works on the table, at the window and in a link you send a guest.
Structure
The categories, in reading order
Keep the order, adjust the counts to your kitchen.
- 01
Starters
4–6 dishesThe first thing a guest reads. Keep it short enough to scan while they are still settling in, and include at least one vegetarian option and one dish meant for sharing.
- 02
Main courses
8–12 dishesThe section that carries the margin. Group by protein or by cooking method rather than alphabetically, and put the dish you most want to sell at the top of its group.
- 03
Desserts
3–5 dishesRead late and decided fast. Three or four options are enough; a long dessert list slows the table down without adding sales.
- 04
Drinks
6–10 itemsOften the most-scanned section of all. Split it into wine, beer and soft drinks, and always show the serving size next to the price.
Worked example
What one finished entry looks like
One dish from each category, written the way a guest should read it.
This is how the same four entries reach a guest: one page, opened from a QR code or a link.
Example content for illustration. Prices are shown with the same formatting a published ListoQ menu uses.
Writing notes
Three things worth getting right
Describe the dish, not the adjective
“Delicious” and “authentic” tell a guest nothing. Name the two or three things they will actually taste, then stop. Two short sentences per dish is enough.
Put allergens in the field, not the sentence
Writing “contains nuts” into a description means every language has to repeat it and nobody can filter on it. Mark the 14 EU allergen categories as structured labels instead.
Show the serving size on drinks
A wine price with no pour size is the question staff get asked most. Put 175 ml, 0.33 l or 250 ml directly next to the price.
Questions
Common questions about this menu
- How many dishes should a restaurant menu have?
- Most full-service restaurants work well between 20 and 35 dishes across all food categories. Fewer than 20 can read as thin, and past 35 both prep waste and guest decision time rise. The counts on this page add up to that range.
- What order should the categories go in?
- Follow the order a guest eats in: starters, main courses, desserts, with drinks alongside. Guests scan a menu the way they read a page, so a category out of order costs attention instead of earning it.
- Do I have to list allergens on a restaurant menu?
- In the EU, information about the 14 named allergen categories has to be available to guests for every unpackaged dish sold. Keeping them as structured labels per dish means the information stays correct in every language the menu is published in.
- Can I set up this structure without retyping my current menu?
- Yes. Upload the existing menu as a PDF, Excel or Word file or as photos, and the AI import sorts the dishes into categories for you to review. Then adjust the categories to this structure and publish.
- How do I list a dish served in two portion sizes?
- As one dish with two sizes, each with its own price. Guests see both prices on the same line instead of two near-identical entries.
More templates
Other menus you may be building
- Cafe menu templateA cafe menu structure you can start from: four sections, how many items each should hold, and a worked example with prices and allergen labels.
- Coffee shop menu templateA coffee shop menu structure you can start from: four sections, how many items each should hold, and a worked example with prices and allergens.
- Bar menu templateA bar menu structure you can start from: four sections, how many drinks each should hold, and a worked example with prices, sizes and allergens.