How to Create an Effective Late-Night Dining Menu: A Step-by-Step Guide

Whether your restaurant is in a popular nightlife area or it’s one of the only spots around that stays open late, making a late-night menu is a good way to attract new business to your bar or restaurant. Although restaurants in American cities typically see just 10-15% of their business between the hours of 10 pm and 12 am, that’s still a sizeable chunk of business.

If your business can viably stay open past 10 and still do business, you should. There are still hungry people out there, especially in heavily populated areas. But if you’re competing with other restaurants, a late-night menu is a good way to differentiate your restaurant from the competition, as well as what customers might expect in the daytime.

In this article, you will learn how to identify if a late-night menu is right for your restaurant and how to make a compelling one.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Staying open late isn’t right for every restaurant. To understand if it’s the right call for yours, you have to understand your target audience. That means understanding not just your primary clientele, but your neighborhood.

If your restaurant is in Little Havana in Miami, of course, it makes sense to have a late-night menu. If it’s in Lincoln, Nebraska, it may not be as obvious. Consider the people who dine there during the day and the kind of food you serve. Do you typically serve professionals looking for a quiet meal after work, families enjoying a special night out, or a younger crowd trying to get something quick to eat before moving on to the next thing?

Young people tend to be the ones going out late at night, so if your restaurant tends to cater to them during the day, they’ll already be familiar. If you attract a young professional crowd, you may be able to bring them back later, as well, with a late-night menu.

Once you understand your target audience and feel good about being able to entice them with a new menu, it’s time to get creative. As Chef Elizabeth Brigg says, "Chefs don't make mistakes; they make new dishes."

How to Create a Late-Night Menu

There’s more that goes into creating a menu than you might think. Well, to make a very good one, at least. We’ll break down how to make an effective late-night menu step-by-step below.

Select Core Ingredients

Running a restaurant is a constant battle of keeping the kitchen properly supplied. Adding a late-night menu may tilt the delicate balance you have, creating an ingredient surplus or food waste. As such, you want a late-night menu to lean into ingredients that aren’t difficult to restock and you may not use enough during the daytime menu.

You want ingredient versatility that won’t upset the balance, leading to shortages the next day. Not only that, but you should offer something that appeals to everyone in your target audience. With a younger crowd, you’ll want vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options, and be able to make dishes that accommodate dietary restrictions.

Identify Popular Late Night Dishes

You’ve probably been out late with a craving at some point in your life. There’s a pretty consistent theme with what you’ll find on late-night menus: comfort foods, finger foods, and shareable plates like sliders, tacos, pizzas, wings, fries, and nachos.

Those core foods are a good foundation to build from.

Write Out All Menu Items

As you get closer to figuring out what you want to include on your late-night menu, it’s a good idea to write out all of your menu items in a spreadsheet. Not just the late-night items, but all food items across your various menus.

This is a good way to visualize what you’re already serving customers so you can avoid redundant dishes or put new spins on particularly popular dishes on your late-night menu.

Categorize Menu Items

Categorizing is a good way to understand your menu from a customer’s perspective. First, you should categorize by section of the menu, like sandwiches, wraps, entrees, salads, bowls, beverages, etc.

Then, categorize by success. A good way to categorize this way in a spreadsheet is with numbers or symbols. For instance:

If an item’s profit and popularity were high, mark it a 1. 

If profit was high and popularity was low, mark it a 2. 

If profit was low and popularity was high, mark it a 3.

If both profit and popularity were low, mark it a 4.

Once categorized, you can begin menu engineering, a valuable technique for menu design. Effectively, menu engineering is a way to make your more popular items more prominent on your menu while moving your less popular ones further down the menu.

Create Signature Items

Your late-night menu should feel different from your everyday menu, but not so different that it’s unrecognizable from your brand. You could put your spin on classics like chicken fingers or loaded fries, or deconstruct your famous burger into a more shareable slider plate.

Your late-night menu should resemble the signature items on your daily menu but also feel special enough to stand out against the competition. To break away from the monotony of pizza and nachos, perhaps you create an exciting noodle or rice dish instead to pay homage to the street food culture of Southeast Asia.

Set Menu Prices

With food price inflation, it’s difficult for restaurants to remain profitable without raising prices. Adding a late-night menu adds to the risk of maintaining your profit margin, but setting an effective menu pricing strategy should help you stay profitable through these late-night dining sessions.

Analyze your cost of goods and services (COGS) and operational costs for extending hours or adding food service to later hours. Take a look at competitor prices for similar items on late-night menus. Then, set prices that are both competitive but high enough for you to earn a profit on each sale. You may want to make your most popular items just a bit more expensive than your least popular ones.

Create Menu Descriptions

Menu descriptions are an important element of menu design. They’re also a good way to leverage effective menu engineering. As always, your late-night menu design should be in line with your restaurant’s overall brand. 

Your descriptions don’t have to be completely consistent with your daytime menu, but the tone should be close. If the daytime menu has long, adjective-laden descriptions, maybe bring the late-night descriptions down to just the ingredient highlights and one or two adjectives. If the daytime menu focuses on ingredients and sides only, stay consistent with the late-night menu.

Consider Portability and Ease of Consumption

Some diners may elect to stay eat onsite, but many late-night diners want to grab food to go. Most are looking for something casual, so if you’re running a higher-end restaurant, it may be good to dress things down a bit for the late-night crowd.

Most importantly, your late-night menu items should be easy to package, easy to share, and you should have at least some items that diners can eat while standing or walking. You never know if they may just stop by before going to the next club.

Always remember to include appropriate packaging and utensils to support convenience and ease of consumption.

Menu Layout and Presentation

Expounding on menu design, your menu should capitalize on Golden Triangle principles and utilize blank space well, reflecting how people’s eyes tend to move. You can read more about menu design best practices here, and get a larger primer on menu engineering here.

Step 1. Design an Eye-Catching Menu Board or Display

A late-night menu shouldn’t be extensive, so you can make an eye-catching single-page menu or post your menu on a prominent board for customers to easily see. It should be attractive, and organized, and use high-quality images that incorporate your brand’s colors, fonts, and style. It should be easy for customers to look quickly and find something that jumps out.

Step 2. Use Descriptive and Engaging Language

Don’t go overboard with descriptions if it’s against your branding, but enticing descriptions will highlight the unique flavors and ingredients of each dish. Descriptive language can help create an emotional connection with customers, but going overboard risks coming across corny — especially if your daytime brand is more concise.

Step 3. Highlight Specials and New Additions

Adding to your menu is a great way to surprise and delight loyal customers and keep them coming back for something new. It’s also a good way to test new dishes to see if they may eventually become staples.

If you’re trying something new, give it a prominent placement on the menu with an eye-catching visual or a separate section to highlight why this item is so exciting. You may want to use urgent language describing the “one-day-only” or “limited-time” nature of a special.

Step 4. Design for Easy Readability

Let’s be honest: Some late-night visitors may not be operating at 100 percent, and many will be trying to eat quickly to get home or the next stop of the night. Every menu should be easy to read and navigate, but a late-night menu especially needs to be readable at a glance. Use legible fonts, appropriate font sizes, and clear section headings to make your menu more usable. Spacing is important for legibility, too.

Marketing and Promotion

Once you’ve created your late-night menu, it’s time to get the word out. If you open for late-night visitors but nobody knows about it, that’s a lost opportunity. Here are some marketing strategies to consider.

Step 1: Online Presence and Social Media

You should always keep up a strong website and social media presence for your restaurant. The web is where your most loyal customers will stay in touch with your business, and it’s the best place to get the word out about your new late-night menu.

Leverage your online presence by updating your website with a banner or callout about your new menu, and post about the menu with enticing photos and descriptions on social media. Encourage customers to use online ordering to get their food quickly and keep the night going. You may even want to run targeted ads to promote discounts and offer limited-time late-night specials to expand your reach.

Step 2: Partner with Local Events and Venues

Before the launch of your menu, you can tease its arrival by partnering with local event organizers, bars, clubs, or music venues to give diners a taste of what to expect. Offering late-night handouts at partner bars or clubs are a good way to get diners excited about what’s to come.

Another great way to market your menu is by offering deals or discounts to patrons of partner establishments. When they leave hungry with a coupon to your restaurant in your pocket, they’ll have a place in mind to go, and they’ll save some money by eating there.

If your restaurant operates a food truck or can set up a food stand, getting permission to set up outside popular nightlife venues is an even better way to attract foot traffic and drive customers to your brick-and-mortar shop.

Step 3: Publicize Late Night Delivery Options

Not every restaurant wants to offer delivery, but if you do, make sure to advertise it prominently. You can do that on the menu itself, on the window of your shop, and on any print or online marketing materials. You can also target online advertising to reach customers searching “late-night delivery” and other key terms. If you have the budget, paying for placement on prominent partner delivery services like Grubhub or Doordash could give your late-night delivery business a boost, too.

Step 4: Highlight Unique Features and Late Night Ambiance

More of a sit-down place? Promote the good vibes of your restaurant. Whether it’s a good place to get some grub and do a little more dancing or take a load off and enjoy a midnight snack, make sure people understand what they’ll be getting into if they decide to eat at your place.

Highlight any key features that might differentiate your business from the rest, like live music, karaoke, or themed nights.

***

A late-night menu could be a great way to bring some more revenue into your business. However, it’s not the right move for every restaurant. As long as you understand your target audience and feel confident you could attract them and foot traffic into your restaurant after 10 pm, a late-night menu is a great way to offer something new and exciting from your restaurant. Take some time to make your late-night menu perfect so it stands out from the competition.