How to design a menu card for a Bangladeshi restaurant

Start with the order of your menu

Guests read a menu card the way they read a page: top first, then down. Put your categories in the order people eat, and put the dishes you most want to sell at the top of each one.

• Starters and snacks: shingara, samosa, chop, soup.
• Rice and biryani: kacchi biryani, tehari, morog polao, plain rice.
• Curries and bhuna: beef bhuna, chicken rezala, fish curry, dal.
• Bread and kebab: paratha, naan, sheekh kebab, chicken tikka.
• Drinks and desserts: borhani, lassi, tea, firni, doi.

Keep each category short. Eight to twelve dishes per section is easy to scan; thirty is not. If your kitchen makes more, split the section or move slow sellers to a smaller list at the end.

Dish names in Bangla and English

Many guests search for and order dishes by their Bangla names, so write those clearly, with a short English line for anyone who does not know the dish. For example: "Kacchi Biryani: slow cooked mutton and fragrant rice, served with borhani."

Spell each name the same way everywhere: on the menu card, on your signboard, on Facebook and on your online menu. Consistent names help guests find you when they search for a dish and your area together.

If you print the card in both scripts, give each language its own clear line rather than squeezing both onto one. Small mixed text is the hardest thing to read under restaurant lighting.

Prices that are easy to read

Line prices up on the right so they are easy to compare, and use the same format for all of them, for example "Tk 250". Leave out decimals for whole taka amounts.

Say what the price covers when it matters: half or full plate, one person or two, with or without rice. Most complaints about a bill start with a portion that was not clear on the card.

Avoid long dotted lines between the dish and the price. White space does the same job and looks cleaner.

Photos, colours and fonts

• Photos: use a few great ones rather than many average ones. Shoot in daylight, close up, on a clean plate. One photo per category is often enough on a printed card.
• Colours: two or three that match your signboard and logo. Dark text on a light background is the easiest to read.
• Fonts: one for headings and one for everything else. Dish names around 12 to 14 point on an A4 card, never smaller than 10.
• Badges: mark spicy dishes, vegetarian dishes and house specials with a small symbol, and explain the symbols once at the bottom.

Printing the card

A4 folded once, or a single A3 sheet, covers most small and medium restaurants. Ask your print shop for thick paper with matte lamination so the card survives oil and wet hands, and order a few spares.

Check every price and spelling before you print a large batch. A printed mistake lasts until the next reprint, which is the main reason many owners now keep a printed card for the table and an online menu for everything else.

Put the same menu online, for free

A menu card only works inside the restaurant. An online menu works on Facebook, on Google and on every table through a QR code, and you can change a price in seconds without reprinting anything.

With MenuBangla you add your dishes once, with Bangla dish names, English descriptions, prices and photos, and get a menu link and a QR code for every table. Guests can browse, order and pay with bKash or Nagad. It is free for restaurants. See the step by step QR code menu guide to set it up.