The green dot in a green square and the brown mark in a brown square are among the most-read pieces of design in India. On a menu they are not decoration and not optional.
What the marks mean
The green mark indicates vegetarian. The non-vegetarian mark is the same square with a brown or red filled shape. Both come from India's packaged-food labelling rules under the FSSAI framework, and diners read them fluently — often before the dish name.
Eggs are the recurring ambiguity. Practice varies, and the safest approach on a menu is to mark egg dishes explicitly in the description rather than relying on the symbol alone.
Mark every item
The strongest reason is not compliance, it is trust. On a menu where only some items carry the mark, an unmarked item does not read as "probably vegetarian" — it reads as "nobody checked". A diner who is strict about this will ask the server, and once they are asking the server, your menu has stopped doing its job.
Do not redraw them
The temptation on a designed menu is to replace the symbol with something prettier — a leaf icon, a coloured dot, an emoji. Do not. The mark works precisely because it is standardised and instantly recognisable. A leaf is a guess; the square is a statement.
Keep the shape. You may adjust the stroke weight to sit with your typography. That is the whole permitted range.
Where the mark sits
Before the dish name, aligned with the first line, at roughly the cap height of the name. Placing it after the name or beside the price makes the diner read the name first and then check — which is one scan too many on a phone.
Jain, vegan and allergen information
The two-mark system does not cover Jain preparations, veganism or allergens, and pretending otherwise causes problems. If your kitchen can serve Jain, say so in words in the description. If a dish contains nuts, say so in words. Symbols do not scale to these distinctions, and inventing new ones puts you back at the leaf-icon problem.
