The Top 10 Bar Menu Design Ideas (2024)

A strong bar menu is made up of more than delicious bites and a drink menu. Great design, an evolving drink list, and compelling copy can boost customer engagement and help you sell more drinks. 

Whether you're getting ready to open a bar, or redesigning your existing restaurant menu, there are a few pointers to keep in mind. In this article, we’ll discuss the top 10 bar menu design ideas and best practices.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Key Takeaways

• Most Important Considerations: How often do you change your drink options? How many drink options do you offer? And what kind of drink options do you have to offer?
• Place Your Stars in Full View: The four categories of menu items: your stars (high profit, high popularity), puzzles (high profit, low popularity), plowhorses (low profit, high popularity), and dogs (low profit, low popularity).
• Match Your Bar Menu to Your Theme: Your bar menu should fit nicely with your theme so your guest experience is more memorable.
• Use High-Quality Photos or Sketches: Studies show that including an enticing photo alongside a menu item can increase sales by up to 30 percent.
• Write With Creative Copy and Fonts: Interesting titles and descriptions delight guests, and help build and define your bar’s brand and tone.
• Play With Bold Colors: Use boxes, shapes, and lines to call attention to specific menu items, or highlight them in different font colors.
• Separate Bar Menu From Food Menu: Your menu should be accessible but also small enough to stay on the table bar once the food menu has been cleared away.
• Choose the Right Material to Create a Menu: If you change your menu often, the material you use for your bar menu should be inexpensive and easy to swap out.
• Build The Menu Off the Table: If your bar is small, consider using a large menu on a wall that's easily visible from everywhere.
• Showcase Specials and Seasonal Cocktails: Offer new, trending, and inventive cocktails each month – and make them front and center on your menu and your social media.
• Make Your Bar Menu Work For You: No matter your bar's vibe, your menu should work in harmony with the rest of your business's look and feel.

Top 10 bar menu ideas

As a bar manager, owner, or operator, first consider:

• How often do you change your drink options? Adding new drinks monthly or seasonally keeps things exciting for guests and keeps customers coming back to see what new items you’re offering. 
• How many drink options do you offer? You don’t want to overwhelm your customers with too many options, but want to have enough so that there are a couple to fit everyone’s tastes. 
• What kind of drink options do you have to offer? You want to make sure they fit your bar’s overall aesthetic as well as the desires of your target audience.

To help with this process, start by checking out our bar menu templates.  

Organizing your menu clearly, including fun descriptions, and highlighting your most profitable signature items on your menus price list are all great ways to get your guests to engage with your best-selling and revenue-driving items. This process applies to all types of bar businesses – from sports bars to chic modern bars.

Here are the top 10 bar menu ideas to help you design the perfect menu.

Place your stars in full view 

In menu engineering, according to Corey Hines at provi.com, there are four categories of menu items: your stars (high profit, high popularity), your puzzles (high profit, low popularity), your plowhorses (low profit, high popularity), and your dogs (low profit, low popularity). This goes for drinks menus, too! 

To find your star drinks so you can highlight them on your menu, look through sales data and reports from your bar POS system, and then use our free menu engineering worksheet. You can dive into our minimalist design ideas with your stars — and your growing bottom line — in mind.

Once you know your star drink items, place them at the top-right or top-center of your menu - the first two places that your guests' eyes will go to when perusing your menu. You can even name them your “signature drinks”.

You can also go another route and call out your stars with various colors. You want to draw the eye to your most profitable drinks, so consider writing it in a drastically different color from the rest of your menu.

Check out how Plonk in Missoula, MT features their pinot noir flight at the top of their beautiful menu.

Match your bar menu to your theme or concept

Make sure that your bar menu – along with the rest of your menu – fits in nicely with your theme so your guest experience is more consistent and memorable.

Bar Brava in Minneapolis, MN does a great job of keeping their look consistent from their website, to their drink menu, to their social media.   

Use high-quality photos or get artists to sketch your drink menu templates

Studies have shown that including an enticing photo alongside a menu item can increase sales by up to 30 percent. 

Add a few beautiful photos of your best-looking cocktails – especially if they come in a fun glass or are especially Instagram-worthy. 

A word of caution, though: Don't use mediocre photos on your menu. It's always better to use no photos than bad photos.

If you’re keeping your menu small and don’t want to use full-size photos, it’s also a great option to work with an artist who can create hand drawn sketches with subtle gradients of your drinks to go along with the aesthetic of your bar. At Water Bear Bar in Boise, ID,  they include beautiful drawings on their cocktail drinks menu . 

Esotico Miami did the same, in a style that matches their bar’s tiki vibe.  

Write creative copy, and highlight drinks with font size changes

Extend your bar’s brand and personality through titles and descriptions. 

Interesting titles and amusing descriptions delight guests, and they help you build and define your bar’s brand and tone. Citrus and Salt in Boston, MA menu is as fun and creative as their restaurant decor, and the drink names are creative and sometimes punny. (One of their drink options is “I Didn’t Text You, Tequila Did”)

Even on your small menu, sparing use of large font sizes will entice guests to look at the different categories of options you offer. Or to make your menu more visually engaging, try using a different font altogether to call out your stars.

While it can be tempting to use a wide variety of fonts on your menu, it’s usually best to keep it to one or two font families for a clean, easy-to-read, cohesive look. Also, black and white font is a smart choice as it ensures high contrast and readability, making it easy for customers to read in various lighting conditions.

Like these templates? Visit this page and insert your email, and we’ll send them over to you in the form of editable Microsoft PowerPoint files so you can use them both digitally and in print.

Play with bold colors, and use shapes and callouts

You can use boxes, shapes, and lines to call attention to specific menu items, or as mentioned above, you can highlight them in different font colors. 

Or for a memorable, maximalist look, go with a bright background like Sidecar in San Diego, CA. They also use tons of shapes and fonts to draw the eye to all their different happy hour items. 

Separate your bar menu and your food menu

Your cocktail menu template should be accessible but also small enough to stay on the table or cocktail bar once the food menu has been cleared away — that way, guests will be more inclined to order more drinks. 

Consider a standing menu or a table tent. Even if you have too many menu items for a small standing menu, get creative in keeping the physical size small. You can always add a full beer menu including canned, bottle, and draft options to make the standing menu possible. And don’t forget about your wine list!

Central Provisions in Portland, ME have their drinks and food menus separate, but they match beautifully and are small enough for the drinks menu to stick around through the meal.

Choose the right material to create your bar menu 

If you change your cocktail drink options often, the material you use for your bar menu should be inexpensive and easy to swap out when updated. Use paper with affordable pricing , but is still sturdier than printable copy paper. Card stock is likely the best option – especially when pinned or wrapped to a harder surface like a small clipboard. 

Also, ensure that your menus are easy to clean or cheap to replace. No one likes a menu splattered with dried ketchup.

Build the menu off the table

If your bar is small, consider using a large menu on a wall that's easily visible from everywhere. Use chalk or some other erasable ink so you can easily update the menu. And when you're updating your bar menu, make sure you're also updating it in your restaurant or bar's point of sale system so your staff can keep up.

Own a bar with a big outdoor space? A large hanging menu that stays in place and is easily visible from wherever guests are sitting is a good option. Anything and everything can be your canvas, and it doesn’t have to be expensive – if you own a seaside bar, you can use driftwood or old surfboards as your backdrops. A hanging menu is a great place to highlight your star drinks so that guests can glance around and be tempted to order them at any time through their visit.

And for any bar in a high-foot-traffic area, a sandwich board is always a great idea. 

Showcase specials (+ seasonal cocktails)

Offer new, trending, and inventive cocktails each month – and make them front and center on your menu and your social media. 

They can be centered around the season (like an apple cider mule in the fall or a cranberry margarita in the winter), specific holidays, or a special event. Seasonal and themed drinks are a great way to change up your menu throughout the year and entices customers to come back often to see what the new drink of the month is. 

Earl's in Boston, MA offers a new $7 drink every month, ranging from the March Collins Cocktail to the December Winter Sangria. 

Make your bar menu work for you

No matter your bar's vibe — from dive to high-end wine bar and anything in between — your menu should work in harmony with the rest of your business's look and feel. And more than anything, your bar menu should help you sell more of your most profitable and popular drinks so you can continue delighting your guests for years to come.

For even more inspiration, check out the free, customizable menu templates below.