Although most food truck customers order from a trucks menu board, developing a food truck menu card for customers to take away with them after they take their order needs to be part of every food truck’s brand collateral.

Providing colorful presentations of the food items your truck sells always plays a huge role in making a sale, either while the customer is currently in line, or in the future.  Unfortunately many food trucks don’t spend much time or involve much creativity of their card designs. Food truck menu cards deliver a new customer their first impression of the quality and the kind of dishes your truck serves.

So, even though every food truck has its own way of branding and message to describe their food, a well-designed menu card is something vendors cannot compromise on.

5 Food Truck Menu Card Design Tips

Because your food truck menu cards need to make a customer’s mouth water, we’ve put together this list of tips.

Know What You Need

Make a list of all the various menu cards you will need. Most food truck have a separate menu for each service (breakfast, lunch, dinner) they provide.

  • What page size will be appropriate for each of these menus?
  • Do you want a flat sheet or folded?

Defining your menu card needs in advance saves you time and effort, and lets you tackle all your menus at once.

Provide Foodporn

Colorful and vivid pictures of dishes clearly present the food your truck serves. The pictures of your dishes should be large enough to see the details of the included ingredients or toppings to make sure they evoke hunger.

Match Your Brand

Your menu is an extension of your brand. Just as any other item representing your food truck brand, your menu cards need to use your brands color scheme. If someone sees your menu card in the service window or online, they should get an accurate sense of what eating at your truck will be like, too.

RELATED: 5 Food Truck Branding Tips For The Beginner

Proper Space Usage

No matter what size you choose to use for your food truck menu card, you need to use every nook and cranny of available space. While you don’t have to use all of the space for text or images, you do need to provide the proper amount of negative space within your menu card design. Properly spacing images and text gives relief to the eyes and helps in reading the menu card text easily.

Keep An Eye On Details

Food truck customers are more sensitive to inconsistencies than you might expect. Blacked out prices or misspelled dish descriptions will distract and leave a bad taste for your food truck brand before they even order. Pay attention to details when you create your card, and then print it out to get a second opinion.

Ultimately, your food truck menu card introduces your food truck to customers, including not just what food and services (catering) you offer, but also the overall dining experience that they should expect.

Where to look for design help?

Crowdsourcing is one of the cheapest means when you want to create an impressive menu card for your food truck. Check out sites such as DesignCrowd.com since they have affordable prices and hundreds of professional designers available on the site. You select the wining menu card design concept out of dozens of entries in response to your contest.

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