4 Best Free Restaurant Menu Maker Software for Windows

Here is a list of best free restaurant menu maker software for Windows. These software are basically desktop publishing and graphics creation software. So, using these freeware, you can create restaurant menu and other designs like flyers, banners, posters, brochures, business cards, etc.

Many of these software come with inbuilt templates to let you create restaurant menu. You can also download external restaurant menu templates and import and modify them accordingly. These software also let you create restaurant menu from scratch by specifying document properties like document layout, margins, paper size, orientation, color profile, number of pages, etc. Later, you can add images, text, icons, and more to the menu card.

A restaurant menu card basically contains menu text, restaurant logo, and some other images and icons. In these software, you can easily add these elements to restaurant menu card. You can also format texts and images using respective editing options like different fonts, various styles, image effects, alignment options, etc. These software also contain a table tool. Using this tool, you can insert a table to the menu page and create an inline menu card. Other than that, you can insert shapes, lines, callouts, flowchart symbols, barcodes, and more to the menu design.

Essential designing features including color palette, fill tool, patterns, etc., are also available in these software. A dedicated layers panel to manage and arrange different elements of restaurant menu design is also provided in all these freeware.

After creating restaurant menu, you can directly print it or export it to a local file. For saving restaurant menu designs in local files, these software support formats like PNG, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, SVG, PSD, etc.

My Favorite Free Restaurant Menu Maker Software for Windows

HP Photo Creations is my favorite restaurant menu maker software on this list. It provides various inbuilt menu templates which you can use to easily design your restaurant menu cards. Besides that, you also get beautiful themes and icons library to create restaurant menu design. I also like the fact that it is very easy to operate. So, even a beginner can create restaurant menu and other designs in it.

You may also like best free Flyer Maker Software, Printable Banner Maker Software, and Ad Maker Software for Windows.

HP Photo Creations

HP Photo Creations is a free restaurant menu maker software for Windows and Mac. It provides various inbuilt templates to create restaurant menu. You can access all menu templates by going to the Business menu. You can also create a new restaurant menu from scratch. For that, you can select a theme and then add text and images to create restaurant menu design. Let’s see what are the nice features offered by this software to create restaurant menu.

Features of this free restaurant menu maker software:

• It provides various standard and artistic layout designs to select restaurant menu layout.
• You can select a desired theme to design your menu card. It contains various stunning themes to create a nice looking restaurant menu card. For the selection of design theme, go to its Design menu. Some categories of provided themes include contemporary, baby, wedding, love, birthdays, travel, sports, school, pets, holidays, seasonal, etc. It also provides a handy option of cycling through themes to check which design looks good for your restaurant menu.
• It lets you select a desired background color of the menu design.
• You can add multiple pages of your menu card.
• It lets you add local images to the menu card. The supported formats for doing that are JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.
• To add text to restaurant menu, you can use different styles of text such as scripts, handwritten, effects, specialty, metallic, etc.
• It contains several inbuilt graphics items to add several icons to menu card. These graphics are divided into categories such as accents, birthday, baby, buttons & badges, banners & ribbons, numbers, religious, travel, love, Halloween, etc.

How to create restaurant menu in HP Photo Creations:

Firstly, from its home screen, go to Business menu and click on the Menus option. You will be able to view various menu templates which you can use. Just select a template to modify it or click on Design Your Own option to create a restaurant menu from scratch. Now, you will see an editing window where you can design menu card for your restaurant. You can use various themes, layouts, text, images, icons, and more as discussed above. It provides options to properly arrange, align, and format added elements. You can also adjust transparency, border, color, shadow, and other parameters.

When you are done creating a restaurant menu, you can preview it and then print it using the dedicated option from the interface. With the print feature, you can also save the restaurant menu design as a PDF document. For that, you need to set printer to Microsoft Print to PDF. You also get a share option to share the restaurant menu project via link, Twitter, Facebook, Email, or Pinterest. But for that, you need to create an account on its website or RocketLife and log in with the created account.

All in all, it is one of the best software to create printable restaurant menu cards. It provides various other templates to create different kinds of graphics such as collages, postcards, newsletters, invitations, photo books, folded cards, anniversary cards, calendars, address labels, etc. Also, this is the easiest software to create restaurant menu and other graphics.

Note: There are some premium features in the free version of this software which are locked, such as export as images, premium editing options, premium text options, advanced themes, etc. If you want, you can unlock any of the features by buying it.

Scribus

Scribus is a nice free open source desktop publishing software which can also be used as a restaurant menu maker. Other than restaurant menu, you can create brochures, letterhead, flyers, banners, PDF presentations, business cards, and more in it.

You can create restaurant menu or other graphic designs from scratch or by using a given template. It contains one menu template in its Template > Cards section which can be modified accordingly. To create restaurant menu from scratch, first, you need to specify document properties like document layout (single page, double sided, 3-fold, 4-fold), size, orientation, margin, number of pages, etc. After that, you can start restaurant menu designing process.

This software lets you insert image frames to add local scalar & vector images to the menu card design. You can apply blur, brightness, colorize, grayscale, posterize, and other effects to the added images. You can even add a table to create an inline restaurant menu with prices. To add menu text, you can use multiple text frames and format text using various font and styles. Other than these elements, it lets you insert line, polygon, shape, bezier curve, freehand line, and barcodes.

A compact Layers window is provided to manage individual elements of restaurant menu design properly. It also lets you manage different pages using options like Convert to Master Page, Apply Master Page, Manage Page Properties, etc. To further help you in designing, it lets you lock an object in the design to avoid any unintentional editing. Besides that, you can check design outline, open scrapbook window, use measurement feature, see action history, view properties window, create or edit scripts, etc. You can also use external patterns, color palette, etc., to create restaurant menu.

When you are done creating restaurant menu, you can export it to files like PDF, SVG, PNG, TIFF, JPG, BMP, ICO, and more. Or, you can even directly print the restaurant menu design.

It is another good software to create restaurant menu cards as well as various other graphic designs. You can also load external templates in supported formats and later modify them.

Affinity Publisher

Affinity Publisher is another desktop publishing software for Windows. Using it, you can create various printable graphics such as brochures, letterheads, book covers, posters, etc. It can also be used as a restaurant menu maker software as you can create custom restaurant menu cards using it.

How to create restaurant menu using this free desktop publishing software:

To start with, you can define document properties including type (print, photo, web, devices, etc.), page resolution and aspect ratio, number of pages, etc. Besides that, it lets you specify layout (page width, page height, DPI, etc.), color format, color profile, margins, and bleed. Next, you can add multiple pages (master or individual) to create a whole restaurant menu design project.

To create restaurant menu, you can use local images and custom texts (artistic text or normal text). You can find various text formatting options in the Text menu, such as Size, Spacing, Text Style, Alignment, Spacing, etc. As for images, you get editing options like rotate, flip, alignment, arrange, rasterize, etc. Besides that, you get handy pencil, pen, rectangle, and picture frame (rectangle/ellipse) tools to draw over menu card design. It also contains a Table tool to insert a table into the menu card and add inline menu items with respective prices. Additionally, color palette, swatches, color picker tool, transparency tool, and fill tool are also provided in it. You can find various icons in its Assets tab to add to the menu card, such as Food & Drink, Cafe, Avatar, Heart, Maps, and more.

A Layer panel is available in it so that you can properly arrange and manage each added object in the restaurant menu design. You can add some layer effects like Gaussian Blur, Outer Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, 3D, Bevel/Emboss, etc. Other than aforementioned features, it comes with Section Manager, Font Manager, and Resource Manager which help you in designing.

Now, talking about its export feature and formats, you can save created restaurant menu in the file formats including PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PSD, PDF, SVG, WMF, EPS, EXR, and HDR. While exporting to any of these formats, you can adjust format specific parameters. For example, for PSD, you can select resampling method, for JPEG, you can set resample method, size, and JPEG quality, and so on. Additionally, you can also directly print restaurant menu in this software.

This is another good restaurant menu maker software which you can use free of charge.

Note: It is available in Beta version right now. So, there are a few features which don’t or might not work as those are still in progress.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is another alternative to a free restaurant menu maker software for Windows. It is a popular free open source office suite which comes with various applications to create documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings. In it, you can import a restaurant menu template and then edit it as per your requirements. You can download menu templates from here > Restaurant Menu Templates and More Menu Templates.

After importing restaurant menu template, you can modify it using various available tools. It lets you import local images to add to the menu card. It provides various options to edit and modify images such as insert caption, arrange, rotate, alignment, transparency, add borders, etc. You can insert text in desired font and style. Also, you can add multiple pages to the restaurant menu and design individual page accordingly. Other than that, it lets you insert various shapes like line, rectangle, flowchart, star, callout, etc.

If you want to design inline menu, you can use its Table menu. Using it, you can add a table and format it as you want. It contains a Gallery section where you can find various graphics items in different categories like arrows, people, environment, text shapes, symbols, sounds, etc. You can drag and drop any of these items to the restaurant card design.

After creating or modifying restaurant menu design, you can export it to many files like PDF, JPEG, PNG, etc. You can also save the menu design in a document format such as ODT, DOC, DOCX, RTF, XML, HTML, etc. Additionally, you can even print restaurant menu on paper.

If you use LibreOffice, it is a convenient alternative to a restaurant menu maker. Other than restaurant menu, it can be used for creating flyers, banners, posters, etc.