Coffee Menu Ideas: Tips for Crafting Your Perfect Café Menu

written by The Crown’s Barista, Tim Tran

You are exploring a new cafe with a friend, arrive at the register to order, and share a moment we are all familiar with – what’s on the menu in front of me? How do I order here? And what do all these words mean when all I want is a cup of coffee? As coffee continues developing and surging forward in popularity, a growing challenge for cafe owners and patrons alike arises in how to make sense of a coffee menu. Here are some tip and tricks in crafting the perfect coffee shop menu. 

Coffee Shop Menu Items: 

To first get a sense of how a coffee menu is structured, let’s start with the building blocks – the menu items. Reading a coffee menu can rely on understanding how coffee has changed and developed in a cafe setting over the years. Coffee has seen movement from its home next to breakfast and diner food options as a caffeinated side to food sustenance, to specialty cafes featuring a host of single origin coffees from all over the world, providing sourcing and farm information as part of their menu listings. Each style of menu will have different amounts of information included to accompany each respective menu item. 

The most important ingredient on a coffee shop menu – coffee. Coffee’s most basic featuring as a menu item will often include it as just that – “Coffee,” “House Coffee,” “House Brew.” Coffee listed in this way will typically refer to a batch brew of filtered coffee. However, expanding beyond coffee’s basic expression as a menu item, cafes may further separate by different brew methods. The brew methods most seen on menus are filter coffee (or drip coffee) and espresso, although other brew methods might include pour-over (or hand drip), French press, and cold brew amongst others. 

A recent trend in coffee menu detailing focuses on the coffee itself as a single origin ingredient. Bringing origin into discussion of coffee provides a basis on which a menu may be designed. Without lumping all coffees from a particular origin into buckets, different regions provide climates, temperaments, and other growing conditions that have bearing on the resulting flavor of the coffee – the oft sought-after terroir. As such, focusing on particular origins in pursuit of showcasing a particular terroir becomes an option when selecting coffee menu offerings. Beyond just listing coffee items that involve preparations of coffee with different ingredients, menus are shifting to include different types of coffee. Rather than just ordering the house-espresso for your latte, you can, for example, order a latte with a light roasted Ethiopia-origin bean from the Yirgacheffe region or a dark roasted Mexico-origin bean from Chiapas. When a specific coffee is listed as a menu item, several qualities are typically included with the menu listing, including but not limited to country of origin, region within the respective country, farm name, coffee process, and roast level.  

Espresso menu offerings consist of well-defined ratios of coffee to either water or milk in various textures, forms, and combinations. Menus may pay homage to some of the more traditional combinations and ratios of espresso to water or milk by including drinks such as the americano, the espresso macchiato, the cortado, the cappuccino, and the latte. These more traditional drinks can be assembled as follows: 

• Americano – 1 part espresso to 3-4 parts water 
• Espresso macchiato – 1 part espresso to 0.5-1 part steamed milk and a dollop of milk foam, often the highest ratio of espresso to milk 
• Cortado – 1 part espresso to 1 part steamed milk 
• Cappuccino – 1 part espresso to 1 part steamed milk and 1 part milk foam 
• Cafe Latte – 1 part espresso to 4-5 parts steamed milk 

I recognize this list and article are not fully inclusive and recommend exploring beyond just those listed in this article to learn the history and formal definitions of the variety of coffee drinks out there available. Typically, a drink recipe will specify the ratio of espresso to milk as well as the milk’s texture and quality. Oftentimes, cafes with access to a blender can introduce blended coffee drink offerings, providing for a blended texture or incorporating unique ingredients such as fresh fruit or more viscous ingredients. Cafes that clear their local liquor sale rules have the option to mix coffee and liquor for flavor-intense combinations. Some less traditional coffee drinks to explore include:

• The lungo shot (a longer espresso pulled closer to 1:3), the espresso con panna (an espresso shot topped with whipped cream) 
• The affogato (a small scoop of plain or vanilla ice cream or gelato, topped with espresso) 
• The cafe con leche (an even ratio of espresso to hot milk)  
• The cafe bombon (espresso at a 1:1 ratio with steamed milk) 
• The caffe correto (espresso “corrected” with brandy) to name but a few 

Coffee’s flavor profile lends itself well to being complemented by other flavors. At times, this complementary taste can be derived from milk sugars. Often the combination of brewed coffee and the addition of milk may not receive as heavy a menu focus beyond the cafe au lait (or coffee with milk). However, coffee flavor profiles can lend themselves well to sweetness and flavors outside of the usual water and milk combinations. Enter the use of syrups as vessels for flavor. Classic syrup-based drinks include vanilla and caramel lattes (dare I include Mochas in this list?), but many coffee shops take creativity to a new level by building signature drinks with unique ingredients. Specialty and signature drinks often build on flavors that play well with characteristics of particular coffees. At times this can be a focus on granular aspects of a coffee’s flavor profile (i.e. accenting a floral jasmine note) while at other times this can be a focus on a more general aspect of a coffee’s flavor profile (i.e. a syrup that meshes well with a smokier, roast-forward coffee). Signature drinks offer avenues to tie the brand and identity of a coffeeshop into a particular beverage and are often a creative venture worth exploring for shop customers and shop owners alike. 

Many spaces offering coffee beverages will provide menu offerings that are food items or non-coffee beverages – be it pastries, baked goods, sandwiches, fruit, tea (I’m just as big a fan of the booming matcha craze as you), smoothies, kombuchas, or more. The non-coffee items being offered allow for space to find local community partnerships or the opportunity to expand in-house creations. Cafes may partner with local bakers, teahouse suppliers, or produce growers to help expand the availability of menu offerings beyond coffee. While coffee can be a main attraction on a cafe menu, non-coffee items absolutely have their place of importance in a cafe to round out a menu’s offerings. Remember, just as coffee is best enjoyed with company, coffee just as much enjoys company on the menu. 

Crafting a Coffee Shop Menu: 

Typically, coffee menus center around coffee as an ingredient and all its non-coffee accompaniments and combinations. Creating a menu will revolve around selecting the different assortments of coffee and coffee combinations that represent your shop identity and meet customers’ expectations. An effective menu is one that conveys to your customers what your shop specializes in and leaves a memorable shop experience. In an area with a high concentration of specialty coffee drinkers, perhaps a menu should reflect a more tailored set of menu items familiar to those in the specialty coffee world. If the average patron is going to be a business worker on their way to work, just looking for a cup of joe, then a simplified menu catering towards quick grab-and-go options may be more suitable. 

Crafting a coffee menu starts with the most important ingredient of the menu items — coffee. A cafe will often work with a roastery in some capacity to procure the coffee that makes up their menu items. Some cafes may be on the smaller end and choose to partner with a dedicated roaster to help build their coffee menu. These menus will often look to showcase beans provided by the affiliated roaster based on understood partnerships and agreements. Other cafes may seek to employ a multi-roaster model, a menu that features different coffees from different roasters. Cafes with the capacity to roast their own beans will have the opportunity to be more creative with their bean and roast style selections and will likely save money on the product (though the investment in training and the roasting machine itself are worthy considerations).  

An important discussion point here is menu bloat and menu focus – each option for roaster partnership has advantages and disadvantages that are suitable for different cafe focuses. Whereas partnership with a single roaster may streamline coffee offerings based on what is being imported and roasted to allow for a menu to have more space and focus on coffee and non-coffee combinations, a multi-roaster model may drive the focus towards the varying levels of roast and provide a more coffee-centric menu, with a wider variety in origin and roast style.  

Menu design will consider beverage sizes and present more options to the customer. While traditional coffee menu items are easily recognizable by name, a shift in the specialty coffee menu has seen a simplification in coffee beverage choices. Traditional coffee drinks adhere to different ratios of coffee and textures of milk in each drink, giving options for larger drink sizes that maintain ratios as they scale up in size; more modern, specialty-oriented cafes tend to standardize to a double shot of espresso and homogenize the texture of milk to a uniform texture across all beverages, streamlining menus and drink sizes around a double shot of espresso.  

From a logistics perspective, the presence and availability of to-go cups is an important factor, although not the only factor. Often, in a modern cafe setting, the largest to-go espresso beverage standardized around a double shot of espresso will be a 12oz beverage to maintain a coffee-forward flavor. If hot drinks from the espresso bar are size capped at 12oz, logistically it might follow to cap drip coffee sizes at 12ozs. However, in other cafe settings that offer to-go options of 16oz, 24oz, or even 30oz beverages from the espresso bar, the accompanying bucket of drip coffee might become a servable option on the menu. 

A consideration here is that as the number of options increases, a menu increasingly will become more text dense. Some cafes have sought to streamline this by a menu looking to explain itself through volume of milk removing some of the intimidating jargon that may make the foreign-sounding traditional drink names seem unapproachable. While a portion of the barista’s job is certainly to help aid in translation of the menu, a menu that lends itself to less translation will be more accessible to a wider audience. 

Popular coffee drink items are an important inclusion in any coffee menu. While different factors influence the answer to “What is popular,” the question nonetheless serves a significant consideration for what makes it to the top of a coffee menu. Whether it is the ubiquitously popular latte, or some regionally influenced favorites such as the flat white or the iced Americano, if an item is going to be ordered with high regularity and volume, it is best to include it as a coffee menu staple item. 

Oftentimes, new shop visitors will lead by asking for the popular drink items. Aside from the traditional staples, popularizing a signature drink can be a unique way to tie in brand and shop identity. The oft-ordered items often will serve as a good representation of shop quality, as they will be the drinks the baristas will be most practiced in, and so may serve as shop quality barometers to new customers. 

Crafting Your Coffee menu: 

This article has covered a large amount of information that makes up a coffee menu, ranging from the building blocks of traditional drinks to signature beverages, but ultimately, the prime consideration when building a coffee menu is the intended audience. Will the menu that’s constructed properly cater to the demographic of a shop’s primary patrons? In constructing and creating a coffee menu, perhaps one of the most important goals is bridging the gap between shop offering and customer demand; to best bridge that gap, it is more helpful to have a particular customer in mind, rather than to attempt to cater the menu as a catch-all for every customer. The reality is that coffee is historied enough and has undergone sufficient changes in taste, consumption, and appreciation that a “standard” customer does not really exist anymore. So, in constructing your menu, curate the menu items to best serve the customers you hope to attract to your cafe space. 

Particular shop identities can help steer the menu items present on the coffee menu. For instance, a cafe catering to a higher number of specialty signature drinks with a wide assortment of flavors may opt to reduce the number of coffee-as-an-ingredient offerings to help highlight the wide swathe of different syrups, flavors, and signature creations they have. By contrast, a cafe focusing on highlighting a particular coffee may opt to not include signature drinks at all, to showcase coffees from different producers in more traditional coffee-forward presentations. A cafe that is catered towards a drive-thru audience may opt to include more classic signature drinks alongside a menu with more traditional offerings to prioritize expedience and approachability of the menu offerings.  

Putting together a menu in a memorable manner becomes increasingly more important as the number of coffee shops increases locally, regionally, nationally. Admittedly, all cafe menus will be tied in that they are representing coffee in different forms to customers. So – how does a menu representing coffee stand out from all the other menus representing coffee? A multitude of factors come together to create a memorable and impressionable and standout menu. First and foremost, the design and graphic elements of a menu are the initial visual contact with a customer. Often having a unique visual look can help elevate even fairly standard menu offerings in a manner that creates a lasting memory. Relatedly, organization and presentation of menus, such as by groupings and clusters, can help a menu stand out in a customer’s mind. Customer’s may remember that a shop has several espresso offerings, or even more specific, in example, several Ethiopian coffee offerings. Having these organized together on the menu can make it easier for a customer to recall cafes where they want to explore more options and beverages. Secondly, having knockout beverages can create a memorable impression. Even a singular drink that is unique and delicious can generate buzz around a shop menu; naming can be important here. I promise it’s easier to remember “Spectacular Latte Name” than “here’s a list of all the ingredients that went into this latte.” Thirdly, a menu that is approachable to the customer is always greatly appreciated. While it is neat and knowledgeable to work in jargon, for a new customer approaching coffee, the experience of reading all these unfamiliar words all at once can be alienating and jarring. 

Remember – a coffee menu need not be exhaustive of all the drinks that can be made in a cafe space. The menu serves as a communication to the customer guaranteeing what is available and has undergone quality control to ensure it is a serviceable beverage within specifications. A beverage appearing on the menu is a message to the customer that “we can make this and this is representative of our beverages”; however, the inverse is not necessarily true, in that the exclusion of an item off the menu does not mean a cafe cannot make the excluded beverage. But what is included in the menu can be telling to a patron as one of their first impressions. Just as one description of the perfect customer can vary from shop owner to shop owner, the perfect menu can vary from customer to customer. A plethora of approaches to the perfect menu are out there, interesting combinations of drinks and presentations of beverages to the ever-loving coffee patron – for us, the perfect menu employs a novel blend of the unique and ordinary.