How To Design The Perfect Restaurant Menu
In the Farm to Fork Capital of America, we’re used to seeing menus that change with the seasons and with the availability of various ingredients, which means your menu can change up to 12 times a year! As a restaurant manager or owner, you know having a menu thats well designed is imperative from the well-chosen layout to succinctly-written food descriptions to correctly priced items. Good design not only keeps you ahead of the competition, but should be about the experience. A poorly designed menu can hurt your restaurant in many ways - one of which could cause slip-ups at your point-of-sale, which leads to slower table turns and diminished customer satisfaction.
Below are our top 5 tips for designing an excellent restaurant menu.
Don’t be messy
A scattered menu gives the impression you’re a scattered restaurant who doesn’t specialize in anything. Ever heard the phrase ‘less is more’? That absolutely applies to your design. Explain the main components of a dish and highlight your best-selling and highest margin items. Skip adding multiple fonts, pictures, and bold/italics and make the layout clean, your font selection(s) easy to read, and enough contrast that makes your font more visible no matter what the lighting is.
Use symbols to highlight specialty items
These days the list of food trends goes on and on - from gluten free, sugar free, dairy free, vegan, and low calorie to kid-friendly options. To keep menu design clean and simple, consider updating your menu based on customers’ eating habits. Over time, this will allow you to adapt to your customers and increase your customer base. To keep your menu simple, use symbols to distinguish food preference instead of a longer, written description.
Add dish modifiers to your POS system
You can have a simple designed menu with short listings of items, but how can you empower customers to order exactly what they want? One word … modifiers. First, let’s define modifiers. It’s just what it sounds like … they are predefined preparation instructions that need to be communicated to the kitchen or bar but are not listed on your menu (ex: steak cooked medium well). You should be able to use your POS system to modify menu items based on preferences.
Determine pricing based on psychology
Pricing has everything to do with psychology. For example, would you rather pay $20 for an entree or $19.95? Although the latter number is only $.05 less, mentally it places the price in the teen range (which makes it a less expensive item) rather than the $20s.
Also, consider listing prices on your menu without a dollar sign. It places priority on the food and not the price. Make sure to determine how much each item costs you to prepare and then build in enough margin so that you can operate profitably.
Determine your menu’s order
According to experts, the first few spots in a category are generally the most read. The last item in a category on your menu also gets a lot of attention. Everything else pretty much gets ignored. Place your star dishes accordingly to maximize profitability.
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