First of all, you must match your menu to your restaurant image and theme; it should complement the building design, service, food and beverage standards and price range of your restaurant.

You want to emphasize certain items on the menu, make them stand out. Your layout ideally should influence customer’s decisions on what to order.

Plan your menu to deliberately direct the customer’s attention to certain items. The positioning of dishes on the menu is one such technique. There is a point of concentration within any format. The key is to turn this area into a point of sales concentration. Put the most important dishes (e.g. signature items) in this area to increase sales.

It is also a good idea to categorise menu items for easy readability. Since most readers only scan the menu, setting your format in this way makes the customer’s decision easier.

The placement of food on the menu is typically assigned by the logic of what would be eaten first. This as a result makes main meals the largest focus, which may be your intention as mains are the most expensive items on the menu, however, if you want to boost sales, you may consider balancing the focus or placing emphasis on desserts or entrees to increase the sales of these items.

The size of the menu is also important. Having an oversized menu does not mean that customers read all of its contents. If anything it probably means you have too much on the menu and should consider having separate lunch and dinner menus, which enables you to put the focus on the right meals at the right time of the day.

Take the time and energy to carefully consider the design of your menu and the merits of using its full potential. Your efforts will be rewarded!

That way, you boost sales, find new customers through referrals and lower your costs of marketing and customer acquisition.

So how do you accomplish this? By figuring out who your best customers are and what motivates them to buy. Once you know that, you can add incentives to make it worth their while to buy more.

What you need to realize regarding loyalty programs is that while they do decrease your earnings in the short term, they will increase them in the long term. When a loyalty program is put into place, you will find that the number of bums on seats will go up.

I have seen many restaurants with Loyalty programs and discount offers trying to entice new entrants to their market base. But why do we reward the newest customers? Why don’t we introduce rewards to give our regular customers better deals to reinforce the loyalty?

I don’t object to giving a meal away or buying a drink for a customer, the emphasis is that I (the owner, manager,) will participate in the offer and explain why I value the customer and explain the reward that I’m sharing. This has far more impact on the relationship with the customer as opposed to a frequent Diner Card, which represents a transaction and eliminates all personal contact.

The best form of advertising is keeping your loyal customers happy, they will introduce many of their friends and family. Word of mouth is the most powerful tool you have.

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