The Anatomy Of A Captivating Cocktail Menu

Storytelling, copywriting & psychology

Crafting a captivating cocktail menu is a balance of several things. Storytelling, design, psychology and copywriting. When it all comes together, you’ll have a menu that will keep your customers buying drinks and trying ingredients they’ve never experienced before.

In today’s newsletter, I’m taking you through what I feel is the structure of an engaging cocktail menu and how to draw readers in.

Ingredients & tasting experiences are the stars of the show 

You can have the flashiest-looking menu in the world. But if people don’t understand what they’re drinking then they aren’t going to be interested. They might even leave the bar altogether.

So, at a bare minimum, list the ingredients that are in a cocktail and make it easy to read. As an example, for an Old Fashioned, you could write ‘Whisky. Angostura Bitters. Orange Peel Garnish.’ The full stop after each word helps the reader separate out each ingredient.