10 Creative Bar Menu Ideas for Profitable Pairings

Setting the perfect bar menu is much more than a list of drinks and snacks; it will define the experience of your guests and customers. Presenting what all your competitors are doing will keep you behind the league; it is important to come up with unique food menu ideas and some fresh concepts with your “Flavor-chart.” To get rid of this headache, we have listed some fresh bar menu ideas for pubs or bars.

1. Chips and dip

Tortilla chips and salsa or nachos with cheese dip are unavoidable combos with drinks. Invent dishes with your chef and come up with something like flavor-infused chips or healthy alternatives. Chips are cheaper yet can sell at high prices and become ideal option as offers and deals (e.g., “Order any cocktail and get chips and dip at 50% off”).

Add images of chips and dips to the menu to capture the customer’s attention. Decorate your menu board with cool animations and engaging characters, and add customer reviews, ratings, or social media feeds to portray the quality you provide. It is worth trying.

2. Chicken wings

Chicken wings are some of the most classic combinations with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. It will never stop selling or become unpopular. Come up with cool pairing suggestions on the menu board, such as spicy wings with a cold lager or BBQ wings with whiskey-based cocktails.

Design your digital menu board with high-quality images, doodles, or videos of chicken wings buckets. With interactive digital signage, guests can place self-order, ultimately reducing your team size.

3. Sliders

Use your dynamic digital menu board to update slider deals, combos, and complimentary options. You can add global-inspired fusion, like a Korean BBQ beef slider with kimchi or a Mexican chorizo slider with avocado salsa. Guests can have sliders anytime,allowing bars to schedule different flavors and varieties of sliders for different times.

Use software like Pickcel to manage digital menu boards and easily schedule brunch, lunch, or dinner menus. Try iconic dishes like Classic Beef Sliders, Lamb Sliders, or Pulled Pork Sliders, which have new, unique options such as sweet sliders using mini donuts or brioche buns filled with ice cream or Nutella.

4. Salads

Salads are light and refreshing options paired well with cocktails, white wines, and lighter beers. A bowl of Caesar, Greek, or Cobb Salad will draw the attention of customers searching for a healthier wine pairing as an alternative to typical bar food like wings and fries.

Health-conscious guests will love seeing calories and nutritional information next to the menu items; bars can also label salads with vegan or dietary information. Bars can give a green, fresh-looking design to their menu board, adding graphics of salads. Such a design can be easily created if you have access to Pickcel’s artboard and can create a fresh design or customization from hundreds of templates

5. Flatbreads / Pizzas

Flatbreads and Pizzas are comfort food for everyone from kids to their grandpas. When bars offer customization in drinks, people would love to customize their food, like pizza, according to dietary preferences, toppings, and bread type. It is important to target everyone in the bar and allow the customization of portions. For instance, solo drinkers can order personal-sized or larger pizzas for a group looking to share food.

The digital menu board can be used to display the menu items in one zone of the screen, and the other half can be used to display the live cooking process and how freshly prepared dough with fresh ingredients is used. It will build trust in the food quality and also make them see what they are going to have on their plate.

6. Pretzels and dips

Pretzel is an iconic dish that can easily find a place on the menus of food courts, food trucks, restaurants, and bars. Available in different variations, such as classic soft pretzels, pretzel bites, or stuffed pretzels, it offers variety.

Bars can display flavor variation in the pretzels with an option to pick any desirable dips like beer cheese, spicy mustard, honey mustard, or queso. In order to bring a unique twist to the menu, bars can present soft pretzel fondue, beer-infused pretzel dough, or pretzels as dessert.

7. Cheese and Charcuterie boards

As a sophisticated yet casual dining experience, Cheese and Charcuterie boards are becoming increasingly popular.

Guests can be served classic European cheese and meat board or Italian charcuterie, which consists of Italian meats with mozzarella, parmesan, and olives. These combinations will add a premium view to your menu with exciting options that guests will love to try with wines. The menu will also display different options based on portion size, pairing suggestions, ingredient descriptions, and price tiers.

8. Tacos

If someone is having margaritas or tequila-based cocktails, then he will love to have spicy and savory Tacos with it. Tacos offer a variety of options for fillings ranging from veggies, beef, or chicken. The ingredients and preparation of the tacos are cost-effective menu options that can offer high-profit potential.

In the menu, we can add tacos as platters with a variety of fillings to increase the potential for large group orders. Tacos can be displayed with pairs for combo offers like “3 tacos + 1 beer/margarita combo.” at a discounted price.

9. BBQ

The rich and smoky BBQ dishes go well with alcoholic beverages like beer, whiskey, and cocktails. On top of that, BBQ platters are comfort food, and guests will love to have them to get the casual and relaxed vibe of a bar. BBQ is a reliable option, and people will never say no to it any season.

Guests will definitely enjoy dishes like BBQ ribs, slow-cooked with sauce, or BBQ Shrimp served with light beer or white wine. Bars can even organize events like BBQ eating contests to attract more customers. The event details can be displayed on the digital screen, including the date, prize, and contest rules.

10. Oysters

Oysters will provide versatility and flexibility to bars for crafting numerous dishes out of them. Raw oysters are often served with cocktail sauce, which pairs well with champagne or white wine.

Additionally, bars can include grilled oysters, fried oysters, or oyster rockefeller, etc. Along with a premium experience, oysters offer a light and easy-to-eat dining experience, keeping customers filled up quickly and ordering more drinks. As it has a low preparation time, it can be an ideal dish for the festive season or rush hours.

How to create a bar menu?

The menu of your bar can depend upon lots of factors, including the target audience, profit margins, the dishes you are confident about, and many more. To begin, start by understanding your audience:

Understanding your audience

Identify the audience for whom you are serving dishes or drinks. It may not sound important because you must be expecting all kinds of people as your guests. But if your bar is populated with young adults, you have picked new generation dish choices, or if it is mostly tourists, then come prepared with international dishes. This will help you in everything from setting preferences to dish selection and pricing that could fit into your budget.

Design of the digital menu board

Start by picking menu options from the above list and deciding on pricing. Once done, start designing your menu board. You don’t need a designer, most probably, as Pickcel has an easy interface where you can design from pre-build templates or create anything from scratch using Canva, a powerful software integrated with it.

The best part is that you can schedule your content and use the digital board in multiple ways by splitting them into zones, and primarily, it comes with POS integration. Use your imagination and creativity to create attractive designs using illustrations, vivid colors, and clear fonts.

Summing Up!

Bars with drinks accompanied by delicious food are a trustworthy idea. However, it entirely depends upon your target audience and choice of food. Bars are free to pick more than one dish for menu ideas or can add variations of one idea. However, if you are someone serious about bar foods, then you will need a digital menu board. When big food industry giants like HungerBox and Mad & Co trust Pickcel for their digital signage software solutions, it’s your turn to give it a try!