Month: September 2022

Your Many Paper Options for Takeout Menu Printing

Have you ever walked into a restaurant and was handed a dine-in menu, only to be disappointed because its print is hardly readable, it’s greasy, and the information is not well organized so you don’t know where to look? You do not want to make these glaring mistakes when designing a dine-in menu for your food business. The same thing holds true for takeout menu printing – you want to make sure that it is printed with the highest quality possible to impress your customers.

The good news is that there are many print shops that are now offering online printing services. Depending on the number of copies that you need printed, they can use either a digital or offset printing process. For small jobs, digital printing uses a desktop printer. For bigger orders, offset printing is used which utilizes huge printing presses with state-of-the-art printing technology. In terms of quality, offset printing is also better. It provides professional-looking results because of the full color, HD printing process used. 

Takeout Menu Paper Options 

Now, if you would like to finish your takeout menu printing task with professional-looking results, you need to pay attention to even the smallest details. For the paper used for printing, here are some of the decisions that you need to make:

  • What size should I choose for the takeout menu? 

The available takeout menu sizes are 4.25” x 11”, 8.5” x 11”, 8.5” x 14”, 9’ x 12”, 11’ x 17”, and 11” x 25.5”. The smallest size is great for packaging, the 8.5” x 11” option is the standard size, while the succeeding ones are legal size, folder sheet size, tabloid size, and map size. Choose one that will fit the number of items that you have on the menu. 

  • How about the folding option? 

There are many folding options available including trifold, Z-fold, half fold, single gate, double gate, double parallel, roll fold, accordion, French fold, and half then trifold. 

  • Medium or extreme gloss?

Choose between 100# gloss text book paper with medium gloss and extreme gloss using 100# cover paper. 

  • What about the paper thickness? 

You can use either 16-pt. or 17-pt. paper stock for takeout menus. 

By familiarizing yourself with the paper options for takeout menus, you can produce the best quality print ad materials that will suit the image of your brand in the food industry. 

Takeout Menu Printing at a Glance: Why Go for It?

Both dine-in and takeout menu printing has its place in any food establishment. In fact, these two are the primary ingredients to making diners want to sample what you have to offer in your restaurant. For the dine-in menu, this is the first thing that diners will look at once they sit in a restaurant chair. If they like what they see on the menu, that is what they will order and sample. For the takeout menu, it’s more of a marketing material to let people know what your food items are, in the hopes of them placing an order for delivery or takeout, or for them to also visit the restaurant. 

Why Restaurateurs Should Invest in Takeout Menu Printing 

No matter what type of food it is that you are serving and however big or small your food establishment is, it’s a must to invest in takeout menu printing. Here is a list of the reasons: 

  • Takeout menus are quick and cheap to produce. 

You simply need to look for a provider of cheap printing services that can produce the takeout menus for you. Just because it’s cheap does not mean that it cannot be high-quality. There are many print shops that offer full color HD menu printing for perfectly reasonable prices. In fact, the per unit price gets lower as the number of copies that you order becomes higher. If you will go with an offset print shop, you can get your order quickly if you want because the printing presses can handle a large volume within a short span of time. 

  • Takeout menus serve as an effective print marketing material for your business. 

Your takeout menu can actually have almost the same design as your dine-in menu. However, you should limit the choices of the takeout menu to just a dozen or so items so as not to confuse the customers. Better if these are high-profit items which are quick to make – you can easily turn them into bestsellers. 

  • Takeout menus are easy to distribute. 

Finally, there are several ways for you to distribute takeout menus for advertising purposes. You can leave a stack of them outside your restaurant door for prospective customers outside to pick up and take home. You can include one in every takeout or delivery order for future reference. You can also hand them out personally in the streets where there is high foot traffic. Or, you can include them in mailers to let more people know about your food business. 

Takeout Menu Printing: Tips on Organizing the Items

If you need to have takeout menus printed out, the first thing to do is look for an online printing services provider. Go online and compare the printing packages offered by different print shops. Do they offer digital printing, offset printing, or both? If you need a large number of copies produced, offset is the better option because it uses huge printing presses with state-of-the-art printing technology. For smaller takeout menu printing jobs, digital should be suitable. 

Narrow down your choices of print shops to the ones with a good package price, a number of paper printing options, and make sure that they received good feedback from previous customers. From your pared down list, you can make an informed decision and work with the best print shop possible.

Tips when Organizing the Items on Your Takeout Menu

Now, the challenge in takeout menu printing is designing the actual menu. First, what size of menu would you like? Your options include:

  • 4.25” x 11”
  • 8.5” x 11”
  • 8.5” x 14”
  • 11” x 17”
  • 11” x 25.5”
  • 9” x 12”

There are also several folding options available – the most common are trifold, half fold, and Z-fold. 

Second, to organize the information in your takeout menu, narrow down the choices to about 12 items – anymore than that is bound to confuse the customers. Make sure that there are high-profit, easy-to-prepare items which customers can order repeatedly and still enjoy. The takeout menu should be easy to read.

If you have a complete restaurant menu with several courses, arrange the items from left to right starting with appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, then desserts. There should be a central color palette, apply the hues which are also present in your business logo. 

To sum it up, the overall look of your takeout menu should be consistent with your restaurant’s brand and theme. As a printed marketing material, you need to make sure that the takeout menu is designed well with the information organized. Finally, it should be printed using high-quality materials to impress and entice those hungry diners to check out your restaurant. 

Counting Down the Advantages of Takeout Menu Printing

If you’re in the food business and you have not taken advantage of the benefits of takeout menu printing yet, you are missing out on a lot. There are many advantages to this type of print marketing material, which we will learn more about here.

What are the Advantages of Takeout Menu Printing?

As the name implies, takeout menu printing involves printing copies of your food items which are for takeout or delivery. For this, you need to get in touch with an online printing company. There are some that use digital printing, others offset printing, while the bigger shops offer both – you just need to choose one that’s suitable for the volume of order that you will place. When printing out menus for takeout, pay attention to the design of the menu, the quality of material used, the paper finish and thickness, size, and the overall look of the printed material. 

Here are the many advantages of takeout menu printing:

  • It gives diners a chance to sample your menu even if they don’t have time for a sit-down meal.

Eating out is considered a luxury these days, giving people a chance to take a break from the chores of making homecooked meals. Still, there are those who do not have time for a sit-down meal but would like the convenience of eating restaurant quality food. This is your target market for takeout menus. 

  • It gives people an idea about your prices, encouraging them to try out your food some other time. 

If your fine dining restaurant looks intimidating from the outside, for instance, there would still be people who’d like to know what your prices and menu items are. Placing a stack of takeout menus right outside your restaurant door, or distributing them to people passing by will take the guesswork out of your menu prices. 

  • It increases the number of repeat orders. 

For those who have already tried your food, a takeout menu encourages them to place repeat orders, especially for the bestselling items. 

  • It enhances your brand. 

Finally, takeout menus – just like all the other printed marketing materials – enhance your brand. Your goal, after all, is to boost sales. By printing takeout menus, you are making your menu items more readily available for those who would like to dine in or order takeout from your food establishment. 

Print Postcards to Complete Your Print Marketing Campaign

If you’re in the food business or if you are selling a line of products for babies, for example, you need to invest in marketing schemes like postcard printing. Naturally, nobody would know about your brand at first except for the direct employees. Over time, awareness about your business should build – and this cannot happen if you will not launch any kind of advertising campaign. Fortunately, you can combine digital with print marketing to spread the word about your brand. 

For digital marketing, you need to establish an online presence. Create an official Facebook page and do the same thing for other social media accounts like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other sites. Of course, you need to have an official website and email address where customers can get in touch with you. Your digital marketing scheme would target the young people who are always online. 

For print marketing, you need to look for an online printing services provider. This targets the older generation who are not always online. Surprisingly, there are still young customers who appreciate being sent tangible instead of digital marketing materials. This actually broadens the reach of print advertising, making it effective up to this day. 

When you print postcards, here are a few things to remember: 

  • Work with a trusted print shop. Check on the online feedback about the quality of customer service that they provide. Determine if they use a digital or offset printing process – some offer both and use the appropriate method based on the volume of postcards that you will order. Also check on the quality of materials that they use. 
  • Know how to distribute your postcards effectively. You can go with the direct mail option where you have to put together your own mailing list. Or, ask if the print shop offers EDDM or Every Door Direct Mail postcards. Here, they will partner with the USPS to every door in a zip code, mailing route, or demographic that you will specify. 
  • When designing the postcards, always include a call-to-action. This will guide the recipient of the card on what to do next. Would you like them to sign up for a mailing list, visit your website, or buy something from your store using the promotional code that’s included in the card?

Familiarizing yourself with the benefits and must-dos when it comes to postcard printing will help you get maximum results for your print ad campaign. 

Postcard Printing and Distribution Facts

If you think that print marketing is an old school way of advertising a brand that nobody uses anymore, think again. More and more businesses are going back to techniques like postcard printing with direct mail to reach out to their customers. Why? Because direct mail marketing campaigns deliver better results than email, SMS, or other digital advertising techniques. Here, we will take a look at why you should consider going back to print marketing. 

Quick Facts about Postcard Printing & Distribution

These are the reasons why it pays to go back to old school marketing techniques such as direct mailing postcards: 

  • Postcards are effective advertising tools. 

If you are a customer and you regularly receive promotional postcards from Business ABC, wouldn’t the brand name stick to your mind? This is especially true if Business ABC sends you holiday or birthday postcards with promotional codes for discounts on their products and services. This is a prime example of the effectiveness of postcard printing. With limited space, you can enhance your brand and get instant response, while establishing customer loyalty all at the same time.

  • Postcards are cheap to print. 

If you’d like to print postcards, you need to look for a shop that offers either digital or offset printing services. For professional-looking prints, go with offset printing. Cost-wise, you can order more pieces in order to enjoy a lower per-unit price.

  • Postcards are easy to distribute.

When you get in touch with a print shop, you can ask about their postcards printing packages. The available options are: print only, direct mail, and EDDM postcards. For the direct mail option, you would have to use your own mailing list. With EDDM or Every Door Direct Mail, the print shop partners with USPS to deliver your postcards directly to every door in a specific zip code or mailing route. You can even narrow down the mailing list based on your desired demographic such as age group, income bracket, or household size. Aside from mailing postcards, you can include one in every delivery package, customer purchase, and transaction receipts. 

Based from these facts, it is easy to see how postcards are a must if you would like to get great response from your customers for your print marketing efforts.

How to Combine Postcard Printing with Digital Marketing

People usually receive postcards from their loved ones who are on holiday, or during special occasions. This may be an old-fashioned way of sending greetings or any other message, but there is such a novelty in receiving something tangible because of the presence of digital options. Let’s say that you are a business owner and you want to send holiday greetings to your customers. With postcard printing, you can make your customers feel special – especially if you will include a promotional code that they can use for discounts when purchasing something from your store or when booking your services. 

Digital Plus Print is The Way To Go!

No matter what product or service it is that you are offering, you need to make people aware that your brand actually exists. This is where marketing efforts come into place. For digital marketing, you do need to have that online presence because that’s where the young audience is. If you don’t have a website, a Twitter handle, a Facebook page, or an Instagram account, you might as well not exist for the young people. This is where they get information and feedback about brands that they haven’t heard of before. As such, you need to establish an online presence first. 

However, there are members of the older generations who have not yet caught up with technology. This is the part of the market that you can reach through print advertising. If you will contact an online printing company to order 500 postcards, for example, you can mail these out to all the addresses within the vicinity of your business. With the help of the online printing services provider, you can launch a worthy print advertising campaign to complement your digital marketing efforts. 

By combining digital with print marketing, you can reach out to as many people as possible, based on how they consume their information. 

Postcard Printing with Direct Mail Marketing: What You Need to Know

If you decided to include postcard printing in your list of print marketing materials, you are on the right track. Similar to business cards, flyers, brochures, letterheads, and other print ad materials, postcards serve as a medium for you to communicate with your target audience. As a business owner, your goal is to inform customers about the background of your company, the products or services that you offer, or if there are any upcoming promos or events that they might be interested in. When you print postcards, you can include any marketing message that you want and the recipient could respond accordingly. It’s an effective advertising medium that is also cheap to produce. 

Direct Mailing Postcards 

The first thing to do if you want to include postcards in your print advertising campaign is to look for an online printing services provider. There are two options to choose from: digital and offset. Digital print shops use desktop printers while offset printing involves huge printing presses using state-of-the-art printing technology. The latter may be a bit more expensive but once the initial setup is done, the per piece cost actually gets lower. This means that the more postcards you order, the lower the price becomes. Another advantage of offset printing is that it can handle bulk printing jobs, and the print quality is excellent. 

After printing the postcards, what comes next? You need to distribute the cards because they actually belong to the hands of your prospective and existing customers. An easy way to distribute postcards is to include them in deliveries, supplier receipts, or gift packages for business contacts. You can also personally hand them out on the streets in areas where there is high foot traffic. But the main purpose of printing postcards is to include them in mailers. For this, you have the option to do a direct mail campaign. If you have a mailing list that you put together yourself, you can have the print company mail out the postcards for you. You can also purchase a mailing list so you don’t have to go through the tedious process of collecting names and addresses. 

Despite the prevalence of online campaigns, there is still a huge chunk of the market that can only be reached via direct mail. By direct mailing postcards, you can target this specific market, enhance your brand, and increase the sales of your products or services. 

Postcard Printing Options: Print Only, Direct Mail, or EDDM

One of the cheapest yet most effective ways to enhance your brand and establish customer loyalty is through postcard printing. By regularly mailing out postcards, your brand name will be familiar to your customers. If you will send out holiday and birthday greeting postcards with promotional gifts inside, you can earn their loyalty to your brand. You can even gain new customers by sending out postcards to every door within a specific zip code, for example. Since postcards are available in different sizes, you can choose which one will best contain your marketing message. Here, we will focus on the distribution part of postcards. Read on to find out how you can get your marketing postcards in the hands of your prospective and existing customers. 

Postcard Printing Options

Before even thinking about distribution, you need to come up with the postcard design first. Are you using it to introduce your brand to a new age bracket? Or do you want people within the vicinity of your restaurant to come to your soft launch? Depending on your main goal, you can craft the postcard content. The space is limited so keep the message short but impactful. If you must include images, make sure that they are printed in high definition to impress the recipient. Also, look for a good print shop so that the postcards can be made using high-quality materials and a reliable printing process. 

Now, when looking for a package from print shops, here are your options: 

  • Print Only

As the name implies, you can ask the print shop to simply print postcards for you. Once the cards are printed out, it is entirely up to you to distribute them. 

  • Direct Mail

If you have a mailing list, you can choose a printing package with direct mail. After printing the stack of postcards, the print shop can mail them out for you based on your list of names and addresses.

  • Every Door Direct Mail 

Perhaps the most hassle-free option among the three is EDDM or Every Door Direct Mai. The print shop will print the EDDM postcard, bundle them, take care of the USPS requirements, and deliver the cards to your local post office for individual mailbox distribution. 

No matter which among these three options you select, what’s important is to include a call-to-action in your postcard copy – then distribute them accordingly. This way, your marketing message will reach your customers and you will get the response that you want. 

Why Use Infographics for Brochure Printing?

To complete your print marketing campaign, you need to use a combination of postcards, letterheads, notepads, business cards, envelopes, flyers, rack cards, and brochure printing. These are tangible marketing materials that will impress your customers, simply because they can actually be held and read. Compare this with digital ads that can only be clicked and read on screen, there really is something special about printed marketing materials that make them effective up to this day. 

Now, when having brochures printed for your business, the first thing to do is look for cheap printing services providers. There are two options: offset and digital. With digital, a desktop printer is typically used and this can handle small to medium-sized printing jobs. With offset, huge printing presses are used. Once set up, offset printing can handle large volumes of printed materials with a quick turnaround time because of the sophistication of the equipment. 

The Advantages of Infographics in Brochure Printing

Let’s say that you have already chosen which printing company will print the brochures for you. The next thing to do is the actual design of the brochure. Think about your goal when presenting the information. Are you giving away the brochures in a trade show? If yes, then you might want to include a short background of how your business came to be. On the succeeding pages, include a list with detailed descriptions of the products or services that you offer. 

To better present information, you may want to consider using infographics. These are charts or diagrams which are used to represent data. Here are the benefits of infographics in brochure printing:

  • It presents complex information in easy-to-digest chunks. 

Now that everything is digital and instantaneous, people do not want to sift through chunks of text. To simplify your message while still presenting a clear overview of your data, use an infographic. It can present complex data in easy-to-digest, readily understandable chunks. 

  • It is eye-catching and attention-grabbing. 

You want your brochures to be readable, yet immediately grab the attention of the readers. With an infographic, readers can get the information that you want to convey in one glance.

  • It is easy to share. 

Charts and diagrams are easy to share. If you will include these in your brochures, people can take screenshots of the information that captures their attention and easily post it on social media sites. 

By having a well-designed brochure with infographics, you can get great results out of your print marketing campaign.