How to Build a More Profitable Menu

Using Cost/Margin Analysis to Highlight your 'Prime' Menu Items

The menu may be the most important internal advertising device used to sell the customer once they are inside your restaurant. It is the only piece of printed "advertising" that you are virtually 100 percent sure will be read by the guest. Once placed in the guest's hand it can directly influence not only what they will order, but ultimately how much they will spend.

Using forecasted cover counts and average check targets, the menu design directly influences sales revenue. Management is constantly forecasting business volume and relating this knowledge to decisions on how much to buy, keep in inventory and prepare. The menu will have an effect on every one of these decisions.

More and more restaurant companies have come to realize and understand the importance of proper menu design on check averages. Several years ago, a popular casual-theme restaurant chain revamped its menu with the goal of increasing check averages. The menu was designed to lead the customer from the specialty drinks on the cover to appetizers on the first page to the complete dinners inside.

The old menu, by contrast, grouped multiple menu items next to one another on one large fold-out page. This, it was felt, might have somewhat deflected dinner sales by making it easy for the customer to select a lower-price appetizer instead of an entrée, which returned a higher check average.

An article in The Wall Street Journal reported how menus were being designed to highlight the most profitable offerings, which were also suggested by servers to guests who wanted their recommendation. Menus are being designed borrowing techniques from the retailing industry that make items stand out as if to say, "Buy me." Gallup conducted a survey that proved menu design had a "subtle effect" on what customers ordered. Using this knowledge, operators can boost sales of certain menu items.

In terms of time, Gallup reports that customers will read a menu for an average of 109 seconds. You have that long to get your message to them. The time limit needs to be addressed in your menu design and presentation. Some popular restaurant chains, T.G.I. Friday's for one, had a menu with over 12 pages at one time. It has since been reduced to six pages.