An impressive looking menu is a must for all the restaurants, cafés and diners. Without a pleasant looking menu, the customers won’t be able to pick the expensive dishes and drinks that we are trying to sell them. If you do not have capital to pay the professionals for designing a menu for your restaurant then you can use the free menu maker software from NCH Software called Express Menu Restaurant & Cafe Menu Maker.
This software is absolutely free and is very lightweight. It comes with several templates that can get you started on your menu designing journey. Templates are available for specialty restaurants such as Italian, India, Greek and Mexican. You can also design or add a logo on the menu. You can choose the fonts and colors used in the menu as well.
In the editor section, we can choose the paper size such as A5, A4, US Letter etc. Under the header section, we can change the header text which shows the business name, address and contact information. We can then start adding the menu items. We can add various categories such as breakfast, lunch etc. We can also add sub-categories if needed. Under any of these categories, we can add items such as drinks and dishes. For each of the items, we have to add title, description, extra, and the price.
The finished menu can be sent to the printer or saved in form of a PDF file. You can then take the PDF file to a nearby print shop and get it printed on shiny glossy paper. You can get the paper laminated if desired.
Unfortunately, the software allows only a few international currencies to be used, namely dollar, pound, euro, yen and rupee. There is no way to add any currency for any other country such as Philippine Peso or Thai Baht.
Another thing that we felt is missing from this software is that it does not allow adding of the pictures for the menu items. For example, we cannot add picture of chicken adobo under its description. We can make only text based menu.
You can download Free Menu Maker from https://www.nchsoftware.com/menu/index.html.