12th Street Catering
Timeline: September 2021 – March 2022
Deliverables: Menu Redesigns
Team: Event Planners & Marketing Team
Role: Designer
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Publisher
12th Street Catering is a women-owned full-service catering company located in Philadelphia, PA. 12th Street has been around for over 30 years and specializes in a large range of events, from corporate galas to small dinner gatherings to museum weddings. In order for clients to learn more about 12th Street Catering, they have a social media page as well as a website. Their website is their main source of information which can give their ongoing clients or prospective clients more details about the company such as; sample menus for full-service events and delivered catering.
Background:
Redesigning sample and core menus
Focus on accessibility and readability of menus
Objectives:
Step 1: Empathize
During the pandemic, 12th Street Catering managed to stay afloat by helping to cater meals to hospitals around Philadelphia. Now that there is an end in sight to the pandemic many people are starting to plan events again with 12th Street Catering. Since two years have gone by many of the original menus needed to be updated with new information and graphics. The menus that I needed to redesign were the delivered catering menu, the core menu, and sample menus (which would be shown on the 12th Street Website).
Problem
When thinking about the changes needed within these menus I first wanted to narrow in on who would be reading these menus and what they were looking for. In order to figure this out, I searched through 12th Street’s databases, Caterease, and found that many of their previous clients were either from corporate companies, wedding venues, and universities or were individuals planning their own private events. I recognized that there was no common theme among any of the users. So in order to cater to all of these different styles of users I had to come up with menus that would be able to be understood universally.
User Persona/Research
To make sure our menus would stand out I researched other successful catering companies' around Philadelphia and looked over their menus to gather ideas. After looking over different designs I noticed that many caterers decided to showcase their menus in a landscape layout rather than vertically. However, restaurant menus are typically in a vertical layout. Also, I wanted to take into consideration the simplicity of the menus. Instead of overstimulating the user with tons of information and pictures, menus were often spread out around more pages and left clean and simple with one or two pictures on each page. This makes it much easier to read through each page and find what the user needs.
Competitor Research
Step 2: Define/Ideate
The next step in the process was to go over old menus and see where changes were needed. It was important that the Chefs and Event Planners look over all the information to make any necessary changes. These included changes to food items, company policies, and prices. Once these changes were made I then started formatting all the new and old menus together.
Menu Changes
I finished gathering all my research and began designing the menus. Prior to getting started, I needed to take into consideration that these menus were rarely going to be seen on paper and mostly going to be seen by clients either via PDF from an email or on 12th Street’s website. By keeping this in mind I knew that the colors and typography would have to be chosen and sized appropriately for the user’s device rather than a hard copy version which can only be seen in one way.
Stylistic Choices
Step 3: Final Design
I first started designing the delivered catering menu. This menu was specifically for delivery orders, not events, meaning there was no staff and just pre-packaged foods/buffet. I designed this menu first as it was a much more popular menu during the pandemic. When designing this menu I decided to go with the vertical layout rather than the landscape layout. planned to have the main core menu be landscape and wanted to make a distinct difference between both menus so clients would not incorrectly order off of the wrong menus, as this has been an issue before.
While organizing all the menu information, I kept each page in one section (example below). I then went through and added pictures that corresponded to the appropriate foods on each page.
Delivered Catering Menu
I was tasked with redesigning the company’s core menu. The core menu is used for all events and has every food item 12th Street Catering offers. I designed the core menu in a way that could be easily replicated and amended so one could make sample menus from it.
I chose to have a landscape layout as I saw many successful caterers do. I began organizing all the information page by page just as I did for the delivered catering menu. Then I added photos that complimented each page’s food selection.
Core Menu
Following the finishing of the core menu design, I then designed sample menus for 12th Street. These menus would be mainly used on the company’s website and would just be a small snippet of the whole core menu. I used the core menu design aesthetics and created a sample version of the core menu. This sample version has exactly the same fonts, font colors, and layouts as the core menu version. I did this to make it easier for the user to understand that this menu came directly from the core menu.
Sample Menu
Finally, I was then left with figuring out what typography I wanted to use. In order to do this, I created two copies of the first few pages of the menu that were all the same except for the font. One copy had the original font, Raleway, while the other had a new font, Avenir Next LT Pro. I chose to use Avenir Next LT Pro because the font followed the same stylistic choices of 12th Street Catering yet was slightly more modern and could take 12th Street’s style in a more contemporary direction. After performing A/B testing on the two menus, I presented them to the delivery team, event planners, and chefs. In order to ascertain which font performed best overall and was most readable online. The final results of the A/B test showed that out of 10 people tested 8 preferred the Avenir Next LT Pro over the Raleway font. With these findings in mind, I then decided to go with the Avenir Next LT Pro for all my paragraph styles and also headers.
The last step in designing this menu was to choose font color. I noticed that the black font made the text quite difficult to read and was harsh on the eyes. In order to determine if this was going to be an issue, I performed another A/B test with one menu that had black fonts and another that had a light gray font. After testing the two options with co-workers, the consensus was that the lighter gray font was easier to read. Therefore I ended up going with a light gray font choice as my last design decision for the menu.
A/B Testing on Core Menu
Step 4: Results
Overall, redesigning these menus has taught me many important lessons about research and design styles. It has also taught me how important it is to constantly go back to designs and retest them to make sure they are accessible to all and up-to-date with the style of the company.
Although the menus are finished, when creating designs, it is important to periodically go back and improve upon designs as the user is always changing.