9 Common Restaurant Menu Errors (And How to Fix Them)

The menu is the only salesperson that speaks to all customers, at every service, without ever getting tired. Yet, in many establishments, it's also the most neglected team member: written years ago, grown through layers, never questioned. These are the nine most common errors encountered, along with a remedy for each.

Structural Errors

1. Too many options. Eighty dishes don't reassure customers; they paralyze them, prolong decision-making times, and raise doubts about freshness. Remedy: cut what sells little and has lower margins. A menu with 25 to 40 options is more manageable and sells better.
2. Confusing categories. "Our specialties" that duplicates half of the main courses is disorienting. Remedy: use standard and recognizable categories, with at most one special section.
3. No hierarchy. If everything has the same visual weight, the customer chooses randomly or at a discount. Remedy: highlight two or three dishes per category, those with the best margins.

Writing Errors

1. Missing or sloppy descriptions. "Beef cut" doesn't specify cut, cooking, or origin. Two well-written lines increase the perceived value of the dish.
2. Acronyms and internal jargon. The customer doesn't know what "gricia 2.0" means and often doesn't ask: they order something else.
3. Typos and poor translations. A menu translated word for word into English amuses tourists, but not in the way you'd like.

Pricing and Update Errors

1. Prices listed in a column with dots. The column invites customers to choose based on price, not the dish. Remedy: place the price at the end of the description, without rows of dots.
2. Prices corrected by hand. This conveys neglect and suggests sudden price increases. A digital menu eliminates this error at its root: update the price from the panel, and the menu is always clean.
3. Forgotten allergens. Besides being a legal obligation, the lack of this information forces staff to chase the kitchen with every question.

Finally, there's a tenth, overarching error: a menu that never changes. Even the most loyal customer, on their twentieth visit with the same forty options, stops reading and orders from memory — and the bill flattens with them. A daily special, a seasonal proposal, or even a minimal rotation is enough to rekindle curiosity, which is what sells additional appetizers and desserts.

Where to Start

You don't need to redo everything in one night. Take your current menu and sales data from a month, eliminate the five items that no one orders, rewrite the descriptions of the most important category, and fix the position of the prices. If you want to take it online in the meantime, with Ordinami, you can create a digital menu starting from this cleanup: uploading a menu is the perfect time to correct its errors, as it forces you to reread it item by item like a customer would. And if you can, have someone who doesn't work at the establishment review it as well; fresh eyes can find in ten minutes the errors that the writer no longer sees.