Menu is the most important part of restaurant’s marketing.
The fastest and surest way to improve sales, margins, guest experience and brand relevance is through an effective menu strategy.
Good restaurant menu design is the key to any restaurant’s marketing plan. The menu should express the personality of your business, focus your overall activity, promote profitability, determine your budget and keep your brand fresh in the general view of the guest.
By designing a proper menu, we can significantly increase the profitability of our business.
That is, if the monthly food sales of the business are 400,000$, every 1% of the improved profitability is an increase in profit of 4,000$!
Menu engineering includes five main steps:
- information management
- Edit menu details
- Edit kitchen processes
- Food costs and correct pricing
- Menu design
Step 1: Managing the information
At this point we take into account several variables.
Understanding the concept – what is the type of business and what hours does it work?
Cafe, fine dining, fast food, bar, etc.
Morning, business lunch, evening, late night, etc.
Understanding the target audience – business people, families, young couples, large groups, etc.
Collecting recipes – working with organized recipes that include exact amounts and preparation processes is a necessary detail in building a correct and economical menu.
Collecting cost prices from suppliers – it is important to have the suppliers’s cost prices so that we can proceed correctly in the pricing phase.
This is a very important job that requires a hand on the pulse as part of frequent changes in the prices of the various products.
Step 2: Edit the menu details
This step includes the division into categories, products, seasonality and interest by tempting formulation.
These issues have a direct connection to the brand’s DNA and purpose.
Division into categories – its role is to help the guest understand what he is going to get. If it is the type of dish, the size of the dish, its price, etc. Also, usually the type of business will dictate the number of categories in the menu.
A restaurant with high-end service will probably have fewer categories and the role of the waiter is more significant when taking the order (which translated into numbers and money).
On the other hand, a menu with more categories is designed to make it easier for the guest, to focus him and thus reduce the waiters time when they take the order.
Today there are even businesses that transfer the service to a digital format (mainly in the fast food business) and thus save on the manpower of the service department.
Products – the choice of the raw products in the menu is influenced by several factors.
First and foremost, the concept of the business and what it offers to the guest, secondly, it is the target audience and its economic capabilities that will determine what type of raw material we will work with, and finally we connect to the operational capabilities of the kitchen and what we are allowed or not allowed to do according to the various local legal requirements.
Seasonality – the seasons bring with them different raw materials and affect our menu. Nowadays, you can always find almost any product, but its price varies significantly and thus also affects the pricing of the dishes (we will touch on this topic later in the article).
Interest and story telling – the interest in the menu and its wording convey the brand’s personality to the guest.
The way a brand walks, talks, dresses, acts and behaves are all characteristics that illuminate the brand’s personality. Is your brand naughty and funny? Or your brand is serious, refined, cultured and sophisticated.
Step 3: Edit kitchen processes
Creativity – Cooking processes starts from the place of creation.
It’s a wonderful thing when your passion and profession are the same, but nevertheless we need to know what is right for the business and how sometimes to adjust the emotion to the reality.
Ways of execution – execution of the menu depends on 2 main factors:
- The cooking equipment we work with in the kitchen and its capabilities.
- The division of work in the most correct way based on the existing manpower and with the aim of not creating a burden on a certain position.
Reduction of preparation times – reduction of preparation times refers to two stages:
- mise en place – preparations
- service
Three key factors will help us reduce preparation times:
- Suppliers and raw materials – Ongoing work with suppliers and working with materials that require a minimum of work.
For example: fish fillet
- Equipment – working with smart equipment that saves time in preparations or during service.
For example: Smart Combi Steamer | Thermomix | Inverting electric pressure pan, etc
- Management – managing the work in the field in a smart, organized and efficient manner.
Using work plans, orderly Gants, checklists and leading the team safely
Step 4: Food costs and pricing
As part of understanding the concept, the market and understanding the target audience, we will know the price range that will appear on the menu.
Pricing is both an art and a science.
The scientific part should be rooted in achieving theoretical food cost targets and profit margins. However, the artistic part of it is how to make the scientific part more appetizing and appealing.
It is important to remember that selling is not always enough.
In reality there can be a positive sales cycle but sometimes there is a problem since the numbers show that it is simply not enough. Familiarity and ability to control numbers and the term called Food Cost are necessary for proper management of the menu.
You can take a look at the article regarding food costs that was posted on our blog:
Step 5: Designing the menu
A restaurant menu is one of the most important internal advertising tools that can be used to enlighten the guest’s eyes about the experience they are about to have.
The menu is an immediate and quick snapshot of the restaurant and it is the one and central advertisement that every guest will read. An interesting, attractive and clean menu is essential to your brand communication.
This can be expressed in many ways, including the use of colors, images, fonts, logos, various icons, hierarchy, and more.
For example, the use of colors is to push guests to buy certain items: based on the “color meaning” you can evoke emotions and motivate behavior.
limited use of red can draw attention to high-profit items you want to convey. Orange stimulates the appetite while brown connects to nature and earthiness.
Another example is that for certain businesses it makes sense to put pictures of the menu items. It is more common to see this in fast food businesses and selling on delivery platforms.
Imagine that in a fast food restaurant the cashier or the waiter would have to explain the dishes to the customer for 10 minutes, I guess it’s less economical at the end of the day.
The more you focus on a menu customized to the concept, clean to the eye and satisfying the guest’s hunger, the easier it will be for yourself and the ongoing activity.
In another article that will be published later on, we will also tell you about an excellent way that helps to manage the menu details during movement.
Of course we are here to help at any time, Just click the link below…
You can find us also in Linkedin:
