The menu is often underestimated as a powerful marketing tool. Your menu is guaranteed to be read by your customers and plays a vital part in customer’s choices, not to mention budgets. What many Restaurateurs don’t realise is that the menu needn’t only be well designed but should also have in place effective yet subtle sales strategies to reach its full potential. It is an excellent way to increase the average spends and encourages repeat business.
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!