Menu Engineering & What That ACTUALLY Means
Presented by Society Insurance
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By Channing Fawcett
Ninety-eight percent of menus are experiencing an existential crisis. Why? Because most menus don’t serve a greater purpose beyond being a piece of paper (or pdf forced into a website) with a bunch of gobbledy-gook words. We must give our menus a greater purpose; after all, damn near every guest that sets foot in your establishment will interact with the menu in some manner. How do we achieve this purpose? Through menu engineering.
Menu engineering is the practice of using science-backed methods to design, organize, and otherwise construct a menu to achieve revenue, profit, and cost goals.
When engineering a menu, I’m not building the actual dishes and cocktails; that’s why you have chefs and bartenders. I am, however, taking those offerings and conveying them in a revenue-positive manner. At the end of the day, your menu should represent your company through brand standards and voice, while taking into account the dollars behind each dish, and the goals of the restaurant as a whole.
There are four strategies every operator should keep in mind when engineering a menu:
Pricing
Pricing strategies go beyond your standard industry mark-up or cost percent. When pricing a menu, the competition, the value of the product to the end consumer, profits, and cost should all be considered. Further, a pricing strategy doesn’t (shouldn’t) be a blanket formula utilized across the entire menu. It should vary based on the product type, menu section, and restaurant revenue/profit goals.
Placement
Strategically placing menu items to take advantage of the researched or studied natural patterns in which people read menus. The most viewed section of a menus is the top; use this sweet spot to your advantage by placing either high-profit items or items you want to push to positively impact your revenues.
Design
Great design utilizes visual elements to emphasize or de-emphasize products. Call-out boxes and starbursts are a common design strategy that typically yield positive results. Design must follow brand standards to create a cohesive presentation. A word of caution -- use design strategies sparingly. Too many callouts create a scenario where they are no longer call-outs.
Behavior
I employ a variety of researched ‘laws’ to assist the reader in my engineered menus. Hick’s Law, for example, states that the more choices you present to your readers, the longer it will take them to reach a decision. Additionally, adding photos has been proven to increase a guest’s likeliness to order (view the study). Use photos whenever possible to drive attention and sales.
The above is a snapshot of the opportunities in which you can actively increase your sales using your menu. You can explore more about menu strategies through an actual case study.
As the age-old saying goes “work smarter, not harder.” You can effortlessly achieve revenue goals by utilizing the menu to your advantage. Give your menu a purpose. Allow it to serve you and your team – I promise you won’t regret it.
Headquartered in Fond du Lac, Wis., Society Insurance has been a leading niche insurance carrier since 1915. As a mutual insurance company, Society focuses on the small details that make a big difference to its policyholders while offering top-notch insurance coverage, service and competitive pricing to businesses in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia and soon Texas.
Channing has dedicated her life to the hospitality industry – she’s spent years working in restaurant operations, both back-of-the-house and front-of-the-house, to management, wine buying, and distribution. She’s also had the opportunity to work at both the national and local level in restaurant/hotel marketing and consulting. In addition to the various career roles, Channing holds a Master’s in Hotel & Restaurant Management, as well as a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Houston. Her goal in founding Stratecute (located in Austin, Texas) is to utilize her skill set to help others build strategies, execute those plans, and ultimately profit at a higher capacity.
Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Best Served. To achieve our mission of bringing more voices to the table, we are committed to sharing a variety of viewpoints across the industry.
