Why Choose a Tri-fold Menu Design

Tri-fold menus are a popular option for restaurants and can be a great way to showcase a restaurant's offerings and help draw attention to popular food items. A tri-fold design is perfect for menus that offer a large variety of options and thus need the added room. The common tri-fold menu has six-panels which allows a restaurant to segment its menu and create separate panels for appetizers, sides and entrees. The right menu design can really boost a restaurant’s engagement with its customers. It's also important to make sure you have a laptop for graphic desig so everything is easier on your end.

Benefits of Tri-fold Menus

Tri-fold menus offer benefits that a standard two-sided menu cannot,including:

Cost Efficiency — A tri-fold menu gives a restaurant the ability to include a large amount of information into a small and compact piece of paper. Trifold brochures give restaurants four times more space than a standard one side menu to include descriptive text, images and logos.

Easy Distribution — Tri-fold menus are compact and easy to pick up and take on the go. They are versatile and can be used for both take-out and dine-in customers.

Better Storage — Two-sided menus tend to take up more space and are more difficult to read, especially when a restaurant offers a wide menu selection.

Why Use Tri-fold Menus

While any type of restaurant may choose a tri-fold design, they work especially well for sushi restaurants because of their ability to create separate panels for items such as sushi rolls, sashimi and hot dishes. Tri-folds are also great for Italian restaurants and the take-out pizza industry.

According to Bayley Davis, Marketing Director at Fran Pros, her express restaurant clients benefit greatly from a tri-fold design.

“For clients like P. Poles Pizza, tri-folds allow the customer to view all three inside panels at once, which gives us the opportunity to create a design that really comes alive with content and graphics. The information really jumps out at the reader, because of the customers’ ability to view menu details across multiple panels,” Davis said.

Tri-fold Designs and Paper Choices

On a tri-fold menu, page positioning is everything. People’s eyes tend to go right towards the center panel first. Place the more high profit items in those spots to help increase sales. People are also more likely to pick the first or last menu item in each section. Most restaurants see a profit increase when they place popular and profitable items in key menu locations.

Make special items stand out by putting a box around it to help bring the menu item to your customers’ attention. For menus with a large number of items, its best to highlight every seven to ten items. Bold lettering can work to bring attention to special items as well.