Fifteen years of menu design, now an app

Fifteen years at the drawing board

We did not start as a software company. For more than fifteen years we have been a menu design studio, and in that time we have designed 2,000+ menu cards — for cafés and bakeries, family restaurants, bars, and hotel dining rooms.

Two thousand menus teaches you things a template cannot. Which typeface still reads under warm restaurant lighting. Where the eye lands first on a spread, and which dish deserves that spot. What bleed and paper stock a commercial printer actually wants. How to lay out a page so a guest orders in ninety seconds instead of flipping back and forth.

Why we built MenuFly

Our best customers were repeat customers. They came back for a new season, a new price list, a new outlet — and they kept asking the same question: can we have this again, for less?

It was a fair question. The first design of a menu is real craft and costs what it costs. The fourth reprint of that same menu, with six prices changed and two dishes swapped, should not cost the same thing again.

So we put the studio into software. menufly.app holds the same layouts, typography and print rules we have used for fifteen years, and lets you drive them yourself. One item list, one place to change a price, and two outputs — a fast digital menu for the QR code, and a print-ready PDF your printer accepts without a phone call. The same craft, at a fraction of the price, as many times as you need it.

What we believe

• Print is not dead. A good physical menu is part of the experience, especially in hotels and fine dining. We have spent fifteen years on paper and we are not walking away from it.
• A menu is a sales document. Layout, order and emphasis decide what a guest orders. Design is not decoration on top of the food.
• Reprints should be cheap. Changing a price is not a design project. You should be able to do it yourself, in minutes, and print the same day.

Where we are

We are a small team in Pune, India, working with cafés, restaurants and hotel dining rooms across the country. The people who answer your emails are the same ones who set type on those 2,000+ menus.