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Where can I go to get a restaurant menu & the sign outside redesigned

L

LOLyourFace

Banned
my parents just bought a brunch restaurant, and we would like to promote a new image for the new ownership.

the restaurant is called Town & Country Cafe but we decided change it to something more refreshing: Brunch Lover.

Now we need to do two major things to implement the new image: new colorful menus & the sign outside.

For the menus, whom do I contact to get this done? Kinkos? I have some basic graphic design skills and I don't mind getting this done myself actually.. what would be the best software to do this in?

For the sign outside, does Home Depot do it? Again, we want to get away from the boring conservative signs and do something stylish and attractive but not too flashy... get what I'm saying?

Further tips and help on anything related to owning a small biz brunch restaurant would be appreciated.
 
Go to a sign store - there's one around here that I always see the trucks for: FastSigns.

One question: by defining the restaurant as a brunch-only place, won't that really limit your cash flow? What if someone wants a late lunch?

EDIT: for menus, just use PageMaker or a similar program to design them, and take it to a print shop (Kinko's would do, but you could probably find it cheaper from a local place) to get them printed + laminated.
 
Originally posted by: LOLyourFace
my parents just bought a brunch restaurant, and we would like to promote a new image for the new ownership.

the restaurant is called Town & Country Cafe but we decided change it to something more refreshing: Brunch Lover.

Now we need to do two major things to implement the new image: new colorful menus & the sign outside.

For the menus, whom do I contact to get this done? Kinkos? I have some basic graphic design skills and I don't mind getting this done myself actually.. what would be the best software to do this in?

For the sign outside, does Home Depot do it? Again, we want to get away from the boring conservative signs and do something stylish and attractive but not too flashy... get what I'm saying?

Further tips and help on anything related to owning a small biz brunch restaurant would be appreciated.
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It's called the Yellow Pages, graphic design and signs sections. Then you pick up a phone and call places to find out how much it costs. Signs are expensive.
 
If you design the menus yourself, I'm sure Kinko's would print them.

As for the sign, there are sign companies that do that and only that.

Look up sign companies in the yellow pages.
 
Originally posted by: jumpr
Go to a sign store - there's one around here that I always see the trucks for: FastSigns.

One question: by defining the restaurant as a brunch-only place, won't that really limit your cash flow? What if someone wants a late lunch?
Click to expand...

we can't help it, the restaurant is in the plaza and the landlord limits our hours according to make other tenants and their businesses happy.
 
do you or your parents have any pervious restaurant experiences? If you have to ask for sign and menu questions, I doubt that you have ANY business exp, nevermind about running a restaurant. restaurants have the highest fail rate, and most close within the first 5yrs. good luck!

edit: oh my parents and brother get their menu printouts from those printshops in NY chinatown, they are just so much cheaper than "american" printshops. Just to give you an idea, an "american" shop quoted us $1200ish for some take out menu, new menu, etc, the shops in chinatown can do it for $300-$400. You'll just have to watch out for spelling errors. 😉


rich
 
Originally posted by: richardycc
do you or your parents have any pervious restaurant experiences? If you have to ask for sign and menu questions, I doubt that you have ANY business exp, nevermind about running a restaurant. restaurants have the highest fail rate, and most close within the first 5yrs. good luck!

rich
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thanks.
 
Originally posted by: jumpr
Go to a sign store - there's one around here that I always see the trucks for: FastSigns.

One question: by defining the restaurant as a brunch-only place, won't that really limit your cash flow? What if someone wants a late lunch?

EDIT: for menus, just use PageMaker or a similar program to design them, and take it to a print shop (Kinko's would do, but you could probably find it cheaper from a local place) to get them printed + laminated.
Click to expand...

that website is perfect. ill browse some more! 😉
 
Don't spend the $$ on the sign until you check out what type of sign you are allowed to have. Unless you are in Siberia there are tons of regulations - color, size, typeface, etc etc.

Hate to spend the $$ and then not be allowed to use it.
 
Originally posted by: werk
Brunch Lover? Sorry, the old name was better!
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Old name was way better.


Anyway, hire a graphic artist to design menus that don't look like crap. It will cost you a couple hundred bucks more, but you'll have the menus for a long time, you don't want them to look like ass. You also won't have to deal with printing them that way, the graphic designer where know where to go for that, and might even be able to get your sign made for you.
 
Think up some concepts, put them down on paper if you can, THEN take them to a graphic designer.


As a graphic designer, I can tell you that you will get much better results if you know what you want rather than having a GD guess at what you want.
Even if the designs you draw out look like total ass, a good graphics expert can save a good amount of time having something to work with. Make sure to give them so freedom though, especially if they have a decent amount of experience under their belt.

Giving them a copy of the planned dishes, 3-5 colors you want in your restaurant, and will use for the decor, and maybe some things that they may want to add can turn out much better results than saying "I need a menu and a sign."

For instance, if you are opening a beach side restaurant with a beach theme, you may want use sea-shell colors, and water-tones. Then you might say that adding seagulls and seashells and sandcastles in might look kinda neat. Go to lowes and get some swatches of the colors you have in mind so it's much easier to help the GD know what you want.

Have faith in the fact that a GD can work wonders for you, but also know that if you don't know what you want, they don't know what you want. Don't be afraid to tell them what you do and don't like about something either.
 
Originally posted by: amnesiac
Brunch Lover sounds retarded. Keep the old name, or come up with something better.
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It's in a plaza of some sort, so how about just calling it Town Cafe? A well done sign, some clean-up, new paint, decorations, lights, and seat-covers (or new chairs) would be good. So would new ceiling tiles, if it's a suspended ceiling and the tiles are dingy. IMHO, it doesn't need to be radically different, only spruced up enough so that everybody realizes that it's the same place with the same basic brunch menu, but under new, hopefully better management.
 
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