Free Marketing Report
What Is EDDM and What Does It Cost to Mail Your Menus?
Mail your menus to every home near your restaurant — no mailing list needed.
Most restaurant owners have heard of mailing menus to their neighbors, but the usual way means buying a mailing list, paying for addresses, and sorting through rules. EDDM skips all of that. EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail, a program from the United States Postal Service that delivers your menu to every address on a mail route — every home and every business — without you needing a mailing list at all. This article explains what it is, what it costs, the few rules that matter, and when it is worth doing for your restaurant.
What EDDM is, in plain words
EDDM is the post office's way of letting a local business reach a whole neighborhood at once. You pick the mail routes around your restaurant, and your menu goes to every address on those routes — houses, apartments, and businesses, every door. You do not buy a list of names. You do not address each piece. You do not need to know who lives where. For a pizza shop, a BBQ place, a Thai restaurant, or a diner, that means every potential customer within a few miles of your door gets your menu in their mailbox. It is the simplest form of direct mail there is, and it is built for exactly this: a local restaurant reaching local homes.
The cost
The postage is 26 cents per piece, as of July 2026. That is the only mailing cost you pay, and you pay it at the post office when you drop the menus off. Takeout Printing charges nothing for the EDDM setup service — many other printing companies charge for that setup, but here it is free. Your menus are custom designed, printed, and shipped to your restaurant as part of your order, and then you drop them off locally and pay only the 26-cent postage per piece. So mailing 2,500 menus costs 2,500 times 26 cents in postage — simple math, no extras. The printing price and the postage are separate, and both are known before you start.
The rules that matter
EDDM has a few simple rules. You must mail at least 200 pieces in a mailing — no tiny test runs of twenty. You may mail no more than 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day, so a very large mailing is spread over more than one day. And the pieces must be bundled in groups of 50 or fewer, banded, and faced in the same direction when you drop them off. That is the whole rulebook that matters for most restaurants. The design team handles the setup side for free, and the post office handles the delivery. You pick the routes, drop off the bundles, and the menus go out with the regular mail.
What size qualifies
Not every piece of mail qualifies for the EDDM rate — the piece has to be big enough. To qualify, your mailer must be bigger than 6.125 inches high or 10.5 inches long. An 11×17 takeout menu qualifies easily, which is one reason the 11×17 size is so popular for mailed menus: it is big, it holds a full menu with photos, and it sails through the size rule. Smaller pieces can qualify too, as long as they clear that height or length. If you are unsure whether your piece qualifies, ask before you print — the team will confirm it, because a menu printed at the wrong size cannot use the EDDM rate.
When EDDM is worth it, and when it is not
EDDM is worth it when you want to reach everyone near your restaurant at once: a new opening, a new menu, a slow season, or a neighborhood you have never reached before. A diner in a small town, a pizzeria in a busy suburb, a Mexican restaurant near new housing — all of them can put a menu in every mailbox around them for 26 cents a home. It is not worth it when your customers already all come from one small area you reach another way, or when you only want to reach past customers by name. And remember: mailing is optional. Plenty of restaurants print menus for the counter, for delivery bags, and for walk-ins only, and those menus sell just fine. EDDM is a tool, not a requirement — use it when reaching every door is the goal.
Where to start
Start by deciding which neighborhoods around your restaurant you want to reach, then call or text 646-721-1569 and ask about EDDM with your menu order. The team sets it up for free, prints and ships your menus, and tells you exactly what the postage will be before you spend a dime. Pick your routes, print your menus, mail them out — that is the whole job.
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