A restaurant banner has one job: turn a passer-by into a walk-in. The dish on the banner needs to be appetising, the offer clear, and the legibility good enough to read from across Putney High Street while someone is on their phone.
We print restaurant banners every week for cafes, takeaways, gastropubs and full-service kitchens across London. This guide covers the sizes, copy and material choices that actually fill tables.
Use a 5ft x 3ft PVC banner with one hero dish photo, one offer (2 for 1, lunch deal, set menu price), and your opening hours. Print on 510gsm PVC, hemmed and eyeleted, and refresh every 6 months to avoid fading.
What to advertise: pick one message
Restaurants try to cram three or four offers onto one banner and it always backfires. Pick one: the lunch deal, the bottomless brunch, the new menu, the happy hour, or just NOW OPEN. The banner is not the menu.
If you have multiple offers, run multiple banners and rotate them every fortnight. A 5ft x 3ft PVC banner costs £42 to £50, so a set of four for the season is well within reach.
Test the banner against your menu pricing before printing. If the banner sets an expectation (LUNCH £10) that the menu cannot meet (mains £12 to £16), the customer walks in disappointed. The banner has to match what the kitchen actually delivers, every day, without caveat.
Offers that work on a banner
Lunch deal under £15. Two-course set menu price. Bottomless brunch with a clear time. Kids eat free with a paying adult. New menu launch with a date. Avoid 10% off, which feels small from across the road.
Food photography that prints well
Phone photos rarely print well at 5ft x 3ft. The lighting in restaurants is moody and the camera struggles. If you must shoot in-house, do it outdoors at the back door in midday light, with a white sheet of A3 paper bouncing light back into the shadows.
Better still, commission a half-day food shoot once a year. £200 to £400 of photography pays for itself in banner, menu and Instagram reuse.
Photo specs for banner printing
Aim for 100dpi at full banner size. For a 5ft x 3ft banner, the photo file should be at least 6000 x 3600 pixels. Smaller files pixelate at print. If your photo is below that, crop tight on the food and lose the wider background.
Copy hierarchy that reads from the pavement
Top line: the cuisine or restaurant name (THAI KITCHEN, PIZZA HOUSE, THE GASTROPUB). Middle line: the hero offer with price. Bottom line: opening hours or NOW OPEN. Three lines, three sizes, no smaller text underneath.
Black on yellow, white on red, and white on dark green are the three most legible food banner combinations. They feel appetite-friendly because they are warm or food-warm in tone.
The banner is not the menu. Pick one offer and make it impossible to miss.
Banner positioning around the restaurant
Above the door is obvious but often blocked by the facia sign. The real win is a window banner facing oncoming foot traffic, plus an A-frame at the kerb pointing toward the door.
If your restaurant sits on a corner, run two banners at right angles so both streets are covered. If you have outdoor seating, a 3ft x 2ft banner on the awning leg captures diners already in eating mood.
Restaurant banner playbook
| Banner type | Size | Main message | Reprint frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lunch deal | 5ft x 3ft | Deal + price + hours | Every 6 months |
| Bottomless brunch | 5ft x 3ft | Time + price + booking link | Seasonal |
| Event night | 5ft x 3ft | Match/event + start time | Per event |
| Outdoor seating | 3ft x 2ft | Now serving outside | Annual |
Special event banners for restaurants
Football match nights, Six Nations weekends, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, World Cup, Christmas party menus, Eid menus, new year fixed price. Each is a banner opportunity worth £100 to £500 in extra covers if done well.
Keep a banner template in your designer's files and just swap dates and headlines for each event. We can reprint from a stored file the same day in our Putney studio.
£200 of food photography once a year pays for itself across every banner, menu and Instagram post for twelve months.
Translating the menu to a banner
The menu reads at a table over coffee. The banner reads at 20 paces in 2 seconds. Treating them the same is the most common restaurant banner mistake. Skip dish descriptions, ingredient lists and provenance copy on the banner. Keep that for the menu and the website.
Pick one dish or category as the visual hero. THAI CURRY £10, SOURDOUGH PIZZA £12, FULL ENGLISH £8.50. Specific price, specific dish, no other words. The detail goes on the table.
Ready to Get Your Banner Printed?
We work with restaurants from Putney to Soho and know which offers print well, which photos hold up, and which sizes fit standard high street frontages.
Call 020 3669 9854 or WhatsApp +44 7376 464869 with a rough sketch of your offer, or walk into Shop 395 Tildesley Road, Putney Heath, with your menu and we will design the banner with you.
Related Banner Services
We Print Banners Across London
From our Putney studio we deliver same day to areas including:
