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YOUR MENU
The Ultimate Sales Tool

The majority of articles and books on restaurant menus that I have read assert that the menu is the 'most important sales tool' that a restaurateur has. The literature discusses how the menu should be attractive and plastic coated (or something like that), but fails to explain how to make the menu work for your operation, how to use it to increase your average check, and how to increase your gross margins. This article will touch on some of the more salient points which should be considered when developing a menu designed to increase sales and profitability.

Menu Styles

There are three basic menu styles which are generally used in the restaurant business: verbal menus, blackboard menus and written menus. Verbal menus are very confusing as customers rarely remember every item which is recited by a busy server and blackboard menus are often difficult to see. In both cases the opportunity to use promotional sales techniques is minimal. The third menu type, written menus, provides a restaurateur the opportunity to sell specific menu items which have high gross margins and which provide the greatest profitability to the restaurant. Therefore, if you want to influence what your customers buy, you should use written menus and promote daily specials on a separate card (menu insert) or table tent.

Focal Points

In designing a menu it is important to identify the menu's focal points. These are the locations of the menu which a customer is most likely to look at and read over more than once and, thus, most likely to select an item from. The items selected for these areas should either contribute strongly to the restaurant's gross margin or build the average check (eg. desserts).

On a single fold (two page) menu the area which is read the most is the top right corner, on a single sheet or double fold (three page) menu the centre of the centre page is the one which is read the most often. Therefore, the best place to place items which one wants to sell is in one of these locations.

Conversely, many restaurateurs tend to offer items to satisfy customer needs but which may not be profitable to sell. These items, most often called 'loss leaders', should be buried in the menu. The objective is to continue offering the product to those customers that come to the restaurant with the intention of ordering that specific product, but to de-emphasize the product in order to reduce impulse buying. The best place to bury an item is on the back page or in the bottom left corner of the menu.

Boxing & Highlighting

Approaches to promoting specific menu items include placing the item in a box, highlighting the area where the item is written, writing the item name in a different print (eg. bold), or providing a longer description of the item. For example, if your restaurant serves a special roast beef lunch and that item is particularly profitable, you should promote it in order to generate sales. The above methodologies will cause the customer to see the item when they first look at the menu and will draw their eye toward it several times as they review the other menu offerings. As a result of the multiple 'hits' the customer may have a propensity to purchase that item.

If you place the boxed or highlighted item in one of the 'focal points' discussed above, customers will likely focus on the product more intently. Thus, likely increasing the unit sales of the item.

Primacy and Recency

There is a psychological theory of 'primacy and recency'. In basic terms the theory suggests that items which are placed at the beginning or end of a long list will be the ones which will be remembered by anyone looking at the list. Therefore, if you have twelve or fourteen items on an entree list, the customer will focus on the first two and the last two items more than any other items in the entree list. An item which gets the most consumer exposure is the one which is most likely to sell.

Accordingly, specific items which you want to sell should be placed at the top or bottom of the list. Conversely, if you must carry some loss leaders on your entree list, bury them in the middle of the list. Note that a customer who comes in with a preconceived idea of what he wants will find that item, no matter where it is placed on the menu.

Conclusion

The best menus, those which actually sell the products which you want to sell and hide the ones which you carry as loss-leaders, are ones which consider your gross margin and bottom line. Once these considerations have been technically considered, then and only then, should you go to the fancy menu designers to have them add the frills. A beautifully designed menu is not necessarily a good sales tool if it does not sell what you want to sell.

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