PDFs are portable (imagine that) and preserve the branding that most companies invest humongous amounts of resources into. Branding and presence is almost more important than the actual food in the culinary business, and PDFs present an opportunity to preserve the clean layout and design that the business had custom designed for it. It looks exactly like what the waiter is going to slap down on the table when you’re seated, and this practice has left many with the expectation to find a PDF version of the actual menu online. It allows you to save the menu for use later. The (accessible) web doesn’t offer the same level of control over the design. Web designers put an awful lot of time and consideration into making a design scale well with different screen resolutions, fonts, and environments. You can never assume a specific way in which a site will be viewed. However, with the PDF, branding, fonts, design, and layout are preserved no matter who’s using it.
If PDFs are taking a long time to load on your computer, you may want to try a different program. On Mac OS X I just use the supplied Preview app, which is much faster than Adobe Reader. On Windows, I prefer Sumatra. It’s small, lightweight, and speedy.
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