Forum Discussion
Best way to organize a café / drink menu with many items for easy scanning in Excel?
Hi everyone,
I’m using Excel to manage a café-style menu that includes a lot of drink items, categories, and prices. The challenge I’m facing is readability. When everything is in one long sheet, it’s hard for people to quickly scan the menu and find what they want.
I’m trying to make this more user-friendly for non-technical users, similar to how customers scan a real menu.
In Excel, what approaches work best for this type of use case? For example:
- Separating items by category (coffee, cold drinks, specials, etc.)
- Using filters or tables to narrow choices
- Structuring the sheet in a more menu-style layout instead of a flat list
From your experience, what makes menu-style lists easier to understand and navigate in Excel?
Any practical advice would be appreciated.
2 Replies
A long flat sheet is usually the main problem. It’s easier to scan if you separate data from presentation. Keep one sheet as a simple table with category, item, and price. Then create a second sheet designed like a menu, with clear category headers, items listed underneath, and prices aligned in one column. Spacing between categories helps more than heavy formatting.
Excel’s free templates can be a good starting point for layout ideas:
https://excel.cloud.microsoft/create/en/templates/
Real café drink menus online can be useful references for structuring clear categories in Excel, such as this café-style menu layout:
https://dbrosmenu.com/
Here are some links (based on free resources) that might help you with your plans.
No matter what you use Excel for, there's a customizable design templates to help you get started on your next project.
https://excel.cloud.microsoft/create/en/templates/?source=create_flow
Free Restaurant Food Inventory Template for Excel & Google Sheets
https://get.apicbase.com/restaurant-food-inventory-template/
Restaurant Order Form Template (Excel)
https://blog.payrollschedule.net/
My answers are voluntary and without guarantee!
Hope this will help you.
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