The new Dunkin' Donuts menu design ignores millennials in one major way
Flickr/Mike Mozart
Dunkin' Donuts is rolling out a new menu that might be difficult for millennials to decipher.
The menu features classy photos of products, including dark-roast coffee, Coolatta drinks, and egg sandwiches, Bloomberg reports.
It also features cursive font, which is an odd choice for a company targeting young consumers.
With the rise of computing, many schools have dropped cursive writing courses.
Associated Press reporter Candice Choi jokingly tweeted that the move toward cursive was a mistake because millennials didn't know how to read cursive.
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/702502548566106112
Big mistake by Dunkin. New menus use cursive - millennials don't know how to read cursive https://t.co/2kajFIUYFY pic.twitter.com/tZ70KWYwXs
Last year, Whole Foods reportedly flagged High Road Craft Ice Cream's packaging for containing cursive script. Apparently, the Whole Foods buyer thought "millennials can't read cursive," The Wall Street Journal reported.
Flickr/Mike MozartAs a result, the ice-cream company decided to make the switch to the block lettering.
Beyond marketing, there have been reports of high-school students being unable to read cursive writing on chalkboards, teachers urging the end of teaching the writing style, and standardized educational benchmarks swapping out cursive for keyboard proficiency.
Still, cursive plays a major part in marketing — right? Companies such as Coca-Cola, Disney, and Kellogg have cursive logos that are an indisputable part of their brands.
Flickr/Mike MozartBut these are companies that many cursive-ignorant millennials grew up with, so they have been familiarized with the logos.
Countless viewers (the author of this article included) spent years thinking, for example, that the "D" in Disney was in fact the letter "G," because of the cursive font. The confusion has been so widespread it inspired an article in the satirical website ClickHole titled "This Man Used To Think The 'D' In The Disney Logo Was A 'G' Until A Radical Brain Procedure Fixed Him."
Companies founded in the past 20 years have ditched cursive fonts in favor of clear, bold typefaces, such as those used by Facebook, Apple, and Google (which seems dedicated to continuing to simplify its logo).
Flickr/Mike Mozart
Ultimately, the use of cursive is probably not a deal breaker for Dunkin'. The chain only cursive only to title different sections of the menu, such as coffee, beverages, and bakery. Most of the menu remains in bold, readable capital letters.
Still, the chain is eager to attract millennial customers, emphasizing its digital sales and speed of business. With that in mind, it is probably in the chain's best interest that it makes sure that younger customers can actually read the menu.
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