The Art of Creating a Menu that Sells
Lately I have been spending considerable time on SearchAmelia’s subsidiary website Amelia Bites, the restaurant review site you can access in the top of the banner and in the process I ran into an intriguing essay on restaurant economics; one I would like to share with you. The source of the story comes from the CIA. No not the government spy agency but the Culinary Institute of America. Based in Hyde Park, N.Y., it trains chefs and restaurant managers, and according to its website, is “recognized as the world’s premier culinary college with an industry-wide reputation for excellence.”
What I learned was that there is meticulous attention given to the menu because as it states:”The menu is the heart of a restaurant. It embodies the restaurant’s demographics, concept, physical factors and personality. But let’s not kid yourself. A menu is most importantly a sales vehicle, and many restaurants – at least the smart ones – use it to get you to eat right. Now don’t go off thinking that I’m talking about your health. I’m talking about their profits.
Well designed restaurant dishes generally divide up in four groups, starting with the stars – popular items for which diners are willing to pay much more than it costs the restaurant to make the dishes. Any pasta dish such as penne with vodka sauce comes to mind. Right behind the stars are the plowhorses; popular but less profitable items, like steak dishes. The next group is called puzzlers, which are are high-profit items but usually quite tough to sell, such as for example, sweetbreads. And finally, there are the dogs, dishes that not many people like (anymore) and aren’t very profitable. Why they should be on anyone’s menu is puzzling, but usually they are a left over from better times with hopes for a revival (Steak au Poivre anyone), the legacy of a previous chef or an owner’s laziness in analyzing business statistics.
Smart menu engineering will steer you to stars and puzzlers, to spend as much as possible and to enjoy doing it. After all, restaurateurs want repeat business. And no, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, before you order your next Fettucine Alfredo, Tournedos Rosselini or Egg McMuffin, you may want to be aware of these seven common menu ploys.
1. Racehorses: Many restaurants group their offerings under the obvious headings: pasta, beef, seafood, entrees, appetizers, desserts and so on. Testing has shown that if you decide on chicken, you are more likely to order the first item on the chicken list. That’s where a savvy restaurant will place its most profitable chicken dish. A really sharp chef might put a puzzler like sweetbreads first in a grouping. The cost is low and the margin is huge. Of course, you’ve got to hope that enough people like sweetbreads. Try the ones at Barbara Jean’s and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
2. Siberian Stock: Unprofitable dishes, like a seafood combo plate that require expensive ingredients, and lots of work, are usually sidelined to a corner that’s less noticeable or in a multi-page menu stashed on page five.
3. Visual aids. If you draw a line around it, people will order. That’s why many menus box off something they want to promote. Chicken wings are a prime example. In terms of gourmet cuisine they’re “garbage,” and cost pennies, so they’re huge profit items. Appetizing pictures also sell dishes especially strategically placed on a table make it hard to resist ordering a slice of key lime pie. Classy restaurants however consider photos trashy; from them the most you’ll get is an artist sketch or two.
4. Package deals. Ever noticed when you stop by McDonald’s for a mid-afternoon burger how the counter puts photos of Extra Value Meals. Most people quickly abandon the thought of a snack for a choice ” two patties, with some fries, and a soft drink. The single burger they intended to buy is off in menu Siberia, on the board far to the right. You’re off to spending more than you intended. A small percentage of the chain’s 47 million customers dropping a few extra bucks each day translates to millions in additional revenue. And how about Olive Garden’s Bottomless Pasta Bowl for $8.95. Research shows that it’s very unlikely you’re going to eat more than two bowls. And, as you probably have noticed on more than one occasion, you’re like to scarf so many free breadsticks first that you won’t have room for all those noodles.
5. Dollar-sign avoidance. Focus groups who’ve been asked to opine on menus display an acute discomfort with dollar signs and distrust decimals. Keeping money as abstract as possible makes spending less threatening. Many high-tone establishments that charge an arm and a leg for, say, a shrimp cocktail with 6 crustaceans decorated around a glass, omit such crass symbols from their menus — and you’ll hardly notice that you paid $12.50 for something that cost less than $2 to prepare. Remember…once upon a time, menus used leader dots (…..) to connect the dish with the price. You won’t find them much anymore either.
6. The small plate-large plate dilemma. Now this is a real smart one. A restaurant may offer two chicken Caesar salads, one for $9 and one for $12. You may think that you’re getting a break ordering the small one, but, it turns out that’s really the size they want to sell. And if a diner decides, hmmm, I may as well get the larger one because I’ll never get rich saving three bucks, the restaurant will throw on some extra lettuce, making the price differential almost pure profit.
7. Ingredient highlighting. And this is what I really have noticed in “finer” establishments in recent years. Foodie-centric restaurants practically list the recipe for each dish making each ingredient sound ultra-special. (An item is more likely to sell if it dwells on the fact that, say, the cheese came from cows at the Liebfraumilch Farm in northern Wisconsin or that the organic mushrooms were raised by a former duchess with an advanced degree in hydroponics and microbiology.) To be fair…even at a humble eatery, however, a dish labeled Mom’s Special Mac and Cheese or “The GeeWhiz Bar’s Mac and Four Cheese casserole” sells better than just plain old mac and cheese. It may not be any more special than what you get somewhere else, but somehow you may think you can only get it there. And that will keep you coming back again and again.
You won’t find these gambits at every eatery. Not all restaurant owners plan their menus as carefully as they should. If they did, they would stop placing entrées in the middle of the right hand page, which is the prime menu real estate, because most people who go to a restaurant are going to order an entrée anyway. How about using that to highlight the desserts instead.
Next time we’ll talk about Chef’s Daily Specials…how about it.
