How to fit your menu on X (e.g. 1 or 2) pages

(Note: This help doc references our brand new print menu, so if the images below don’t look like your menu or menu settings pages, it’s not an error—the menu is still in it’s testing phase and not everyone has automatic access yet. However, if you’d like access to the new menu, just schedule a call with our support team and we’ll get you all squared away.)

It’s essential to get your menu to fit on the correct number of pages. To have one or two full pages and then have a couple menu items trailing onto a second or third page doesn’t look right, and often results in those last few menu items getting forgotten.

As with anything (term papers, anyone?), there are 3 levers you can pull to lengthen or shorten your menu: font size, spacing, and the number of columns. The good news is that it’s extremely easy to adjust all of these in your print menu settings.

Columns

You can adjust the number of columns you use in the “Structure” section in your print menu settings:

As you can see, you can choose from 1, 2, or 3 columns—if you’retrying to cut down on the number of menu pages, choosing 3 columns will help you get the most menu items per page. Choosing 1 column will fit the fewest items per page. A 2-column configuration is right in the middle.

When you make a change in the number of columns, your menu preview will automatically update. Review the menu preview to see whether or not you need to keep tinkering to get your menu to fit on the correct number of pages. You can either continue adjusting columns, or you can move onto the second lever: spacing.

Spacing Tool

The next tool you’ll want to use is the Spacing tool, which is in the “Layout” tab in your print menu settings:

Here you can choose from “Comfortable,” Cozy,“ and ”Compact“ for your spacing (for folks who use Gmail, this setup and language will be familiar). As the names imply, ”Comfortable“ provides the largest font and most spacing and ”Compact“ provides the smallest font and least spacing. ”Cozy” is in the middle.

Cozy is the default setting, so you’ll be adjusting from there. If you’re just trailing over onto an additional page by a few menu items, switching to “Compact” will likely pull those items up onto the correct page. If you want to fill out a page, switching to “Comfortable” will likely get you sorted.

Font sizes

Finally, if you still need to make changes to get your menu to fit within the correct number of pages, you can adjust the font sizes of individual sections within your menu. For example, you can adjust the size of the menu item name, the size of the menu item description, and so on.
You can edit the font sizes for each piece of your menu in the “Customize” section of your print menu settings:

Remove Menu item descriptions

If after all that tinkering your menu is still too long, you can remove the descriptions of your menu items. You can do this by de-selecting the “Include descriptions” checkbox within the “Content” section:

We do not recommend doing this—drinkers value descriptions, and many of our customers report that including a menu with descriptions helps a ton with speeding up the ordering process. And in an industry where time is money, getting drinkers to their first sip faster can mean a difference between one drink per person and two drinks per person. Extend that out across all your guests and you can understand the impact this can have.

However, if it’s more important to you to have a shorter menu, then by all means, go ahead and remove the descriptions!