10 Free Dinner Menu Planning Templates

What’s the hardest part about adulting? Easy: Realizing you have to get dinner on the table from now until the end of time. 🍽️

Meal planning is a universal challenge, whether you’re a single professional, running a family household, or managing a bustling restaurant. If you’re constantly thinking, “What should I make for dinner tonight?” you need a dinner menu planning template.

Meal planning prevents food waste, cuts down on takeout and delivery costs, and saves you from hectic and inconvenient grocery runs. Over time, this lowers your monthly grocery bill and prevents mid-week stress. 🧘

Menu planning templates are utilized by families, individuals, and restaurants alike. And while all parties will assure you that meal planning is necessary, the upfront work is often overwhelming.

To help get you started, we’ve rounded up 10 convenient dinner menu planning templates for you to use now.

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What is a Dinner Menu Planning Template?

A dinner menu planning template makes it easy to plan meals for a set period of time (typically a day, week, or month). These templates are useful to young professionals, families, restaurants, event planners, catering businesses, and other organizations.

Menu planning templates come in different designs, are built for different groups of people, and encompass different time ranges. For example, a monthly meal planner handles meals for the entire month, while a weekly meal planner will organize Sunday through Saturday. Some simple templates are built for typical households, while more intricate layouts are designed specifically for restaurants, event planners, or catering businesses. 🧑‍🍳

Meal planning templates help you brainstorm recipes, create shopping lists, and ultimately create a menu for every meal of the day. By planning meals at the beginning of the week, you’ll preserve your budget, save yourself from headaches, and cut down on food spoilage.

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What Makes a Good Dinner Menu Planning Template?

With the right dinner menu or meal planning template, you can plan menus for every meal, every day of the week (or month).

The best dinner menu planning template will allow you to:

• Visualize meals for the week: The best menu planner leaves space for every meal of the day. Look for one with space for recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks
• Prevent food waste: One of the biggest advantages of menu planning is limited food waste, which also lowers your monthly grocery budget. Look for meal planners with grocery list templates, so you shop based on your dinner ideas and keep track of what’s in your kitchen
• Prioritize healthy meals: Planning meals in advance makes it simple to prioritize healthy food and make sure you’re balancing your daily meals from a weekly or monthly perspective 🥒
• Keep everyone on the same page: Answer the never-ending cries of, “What’s for dinner?” with a handy printout of a weekly or monthly meal plan template so the whole family knows what’s coming up

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10 Dinner Menu Planning Templates to Use in 2024

Can’t decide what to make for dinner this week? These 10 handy dinner menu planning templates will help you choose home-cooked meals over takeout, reduce your grocery bill, and prevent decision fatigue throughout the week. 🤩

1. ClickUp Menu Planning Template

Getting dinner on the table is tough. But getting dinner on the table all week? That often seems impossible.

With the ClickUp Menu Planning Template, make the impossible happen with a week’s worth of meal plans. Start by determining the number of people, start and end dates, number of meals per day, and weekly budget. From there, plan your meals, schedule your meal prep, or save recipes to your “recipe box.” 🗃️

With sections available for meal planning, shopping lists, and daily tasks (down to cleaning the fridge!), this template makes meal prep surprisingly manageable.

Plus, the space for recipes and ingredients saves you from making multiple trips to the grocery store with this meal prep template. Soon, you’ll create an efficient workflow for getting meals on the table each week.

2. ClickUp Restaurant Action Plan Template

Are you hosting Thanksgiving this year or planning a large family gathering? To make dinner parties a bit more organized and improve process mapping for your kitchen, leverage the ClickUp Restaurant Action Plan Template.

With this template, you’ll run your home kitchen like a Michelin-star restaurant. Make an organized to-do list of all your action items, including planning the menu, purchasing groceries, or sending out invitations. If you use a divide-and-conquer strategy, set priorities, schedule deadlines, and assign tasks to other family members. 📋

To execute a large gathering, you need an efficient project plan. Fortunately, ClickUp’s built-in tools make it easy to create a project development strategy. Use the template’s color-coded system to immediately understand which tasks are completed or in progress and whether tasks are high-priority. Free templates like this don’t get much better.

3. ClickUp Restaurant SOP Template

Want to get dinner on the table at your restaurant? Before you start meal prepping, you need to ensure every aspect of your business is streamlined. Delegate tasks while ensuring quality control throughout your establishment with ClickUp’s Restaurant SOP Template.

This template establishes standard operating procedures (SOP) for facilities, health and hygiene, food prep, menu production, order management, and communications. For example, build your facilities and equipment SOP with instructions for laundry, sanitation, dishwashing, and cleaning the ice machine. Outlining each SOP ultimately improves process efficiency for your kitchen. 

Plus, providing a high-level overview of your establishment—including your objectives, internal policies, and the concept of your restaurant—makes it easy to onboard new employees while improving your dining service. 

4. ClickUp Restaurant Scope of Work Template

If you run a restaurant, meal planning is so much more than planning a great menu—it’s also about planning great service. Running a restaurant requires meticulous attention to detail. To ensure everyone on your staff—including hosts, servers, and chefs—understand their daily duties, take advantage of ClickUp’s Restaurant Scope of Work Template.

This template clearly outlines deliverables, timelines, budgets, and communication plans for every team member. Start by offering a brief overview of a role, then dive into a description of each daily task or responsibility. Finally, outline approval processes and communication plans so team members know where to go with questions or concerns. 🙋

With this handy template from ClickUp, every person within your establishment knows exactly what’s expected of them so they provide better service to your patrons.

5. ClickUp Food Development Statement of Work Template

Have you been cooking up a new recipe or food product? This meticulously organized template streamlines every aspect of food development. 🍔

With ClickUp’s Food Development Statement of Work Template, coordinate every aspect of launching a new product. Start by listing the name of your recipe or product and then dive into the product scope, list all potential deliverables, and set a budget for your project.

If you need to keep things quiet pre-launch, use this template to review electronic commerce laws, copyrights, and trademarks. Plus, keep your team and potential vendors on the same page by including your terms and conditions, such as agreements, force majeure, and termination.

6. Weekly Meal Plan Template by OnPlanners

This weekly meal planner will prevent stress and headaches throughout the week. This easy-to-follow Weekly Meal Plan Template from OnPlanners is designed for figuring out breakfast, lunch, and dinner from Sunday to Saturday. 

Plus, it offers space for your grocery list, dividing items into dairy, produce, grains, meat, and other categories. Simply print out your template, add your weekly meals, and hang the schedule in your kitchen for easy access.

With this simple weekly menu planner, you’ll save time planning, prepping, and grocery shopping. The result? You spend less time at the store and in the kitchen, saving countless hours each week. 🕰️

7. Weekly Meal Planner Template by GooDocs

Part of the planning process is leaving yourself plenty of white space. Fortunately, the Weekly Meal Planner Template by GooDocs allows plenty of white space for every day of the week. Scribble notes, jot down ideas for each day or write yourself a reminder to check which ingredients you already have on hand.

This free printable meal planner is divided into two primary sections: your daily meals and a shopping list. Simply fill out the grid to designate your meals, then write each ingredient you need at the store. 🛒

The best part? This printable meal planner template is easy to post on your fridge to keep your kitchen organized. 

8. Menu Template by Template.net

If you’re opening a restaurant, catering a party, or hosting a large event, this beautiful Menu Template by Template.net will build a showstopping menu for the evening.

Categorize dishes as appetizers, mains, beverages, and other courses, and list their names, descriptions, and pricing (if applicable). Put the finishing touches in place by customizing this editable menu template to fit your branding. 

With this DIY template, deliver an upscale event or class up a special occasion at home. Simply edit the template online, then download it in PNG or PDF format. From there, place your professional menu at each place setting and prepare to wow your diners. ✨

9. Weekly Meal plan Template by PDFFiller

Want a printable weekly meal planner without any fluff? Then you must try this incredibly simple Weekly Meal Plan Template from PDFFiller.

For those who see meal planning as a necessary evil, this is the perfect fit. This template features an easy-to-follow grid format to plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for every meal of the week. Simply write the date at the top of the planner, then list your daily meals—that’s it! 📅

With this simple template, brainstorm meals for your whole family without getting overwhelmed by the planning process. Simply print out the template, fill in your meal ideas, and then carry it with you to the store (or take a photo of it with your phone). Best of all, it’s easy to reprint the same template each week to cut down on kitchen and meal planning overwhelm.

10. Food Menu Template by Template.net

Whether you’re opening a restaurant, fast food joint, or takeout business, you might want to showcase your mouth-watering dishes. With this versatile template by Template.net, your potential customers will feast their eyes on the visuals of your menu. 🤤

Simply customize the template to your brand, adding your logo, color palette, and typography. From there, list various menu items, adding a photo of each dish to illustrate your offerings. Soon, you’ll have a visual and written description of each dish in your restaurant.

This stylish template will attract new customers while increasing sales for your company. Swap out text and images online, download the PNG file, then print out your menu to share with patrons. From there, share the menu with your potential customers by placing the menu on each table, uploading it as a PDF to your website, launching a direct mail campaign, or posting it outside your restaurant.

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Start Meal Planning With ClickUp’s Dinner Menu Planning Templates

Meal prep is a daunting task—particularly when you don’t know what to make. Take some stress off your plate with the right dinner menu planning template. Brainstorm meal ideas, pair recipes with each meal of the day, and create shopping lists in advance to prevent food waste, prioritize healthy eating, and cut down on food costs. 🙌

Let ClickUp take your meal planning to the next level. With ClickUp’s handy menu planning templates, you’ll create menus, organize kitchen SOPs, outline your restaurant’s scope of work, or even launch a new food product.

To access dinner menu planning templates, thousands of integrations, and countless project management tools, join ClickUp today.