My restaurant just bought a printer and we want to make our wine menus ourselves instead of going to a print shop. We want the nice folded 11x17 style that looks professional.
Our current process:
- Build the wine list in Google Sheets
- Import it into Google Docs as a linked table
- Export as PDF
- Print using Adobe Acrobat on 11x17 paper in landscape mode
The goal is to have white wines on one side and red wines on the other side of the same sheet, then fold it in half.
The issue: When we print from Acrobat, everything comes out way too small. The content doesn’t use the full width of the 11x17 paper. Even when we try “fit to page” or other scaling options, it just looks like tiny text with huge white borders around it.
What we need:
- Full-width two-column layout that uses the entire page
- Professional looking folded menu
- Keep the connection to Google Sheets so we can update prices easily
Extra question: How do restaurants handle printing both sides? Like having a logo on the front and maybe appetizers or drinks on the back?
Google Docs uses fixed column widths that won’t scale up for larger paper - that’s your problem right there. I ran into this same issue printing menus at my place. Skip the table import from Sheets and just rebuild your wine list directly in Docs with a proper two-column layout. Set your margins to 0.5 inches all around to get more space, and bump your font up to 11 or 12pt so people can actually read it. The linked table thing is handy but it kills your formatting options. For double-sided printing, make separate docs for front and back. If your printer doesn’t do auto duplex, print all the fronts first, flip the stack, then run the backs.
This sounds like a page setup issue, not just scaling. I ran into the same thing making menus. Your Google Docs is probably still set to 8.5x11, so Acrobat centers everything when you print on 11x17 paper. Go to File > Page Setup in Google Docs and change it to 11x17 before you start designing. That way your two-column layout will use the full paper size. For double-sided printing, just turn on duplex in your print settings - most printers handle this fine. If you want better layout control for bigger formats, try Canva instead.
skip google docs - it’s awful for anything larger than 8.5x11. use powerpoint or word instead and set your page size to 11x17 right from the beginning. you’ll have way better control over spacing and text sizing. most restaurants use indesign, but that’s overkill if you just need a basic menu.