How small changes to your menu can add thousands
of dollars a year to your bottom line - Part 2
"Step-by-step how to layout a menu for maximum profit." Some people call this, menu engineering. You have to do the previous exercise in order to know what you want to accomplish with your menu before you can start to do a successful menu design. In Part 1 of this article we discussed how to determine which of four quadrants on the graph each of your menu items fit. Go back and review Part 1 if you need to before you continue with Part 2. Basically with your menu design you want to persuade your customers to select the items in quadrants 2 and 4 instead of the items in quardants 1 and 3. Here's how you do that. Design your menu in categories with boxes around the categories. This makes ordering faster and gives you control over how you encourage customers to select the high profit items you want them to select in each category. A customer who wants a steak can quickly skip over the pasta, seafood, etc. categories. The top right corner of a one-page or a two-page menu will get the most attention and therefore the most sales. The top half of the middle section of a three-page menu will be seen the most and get the most sales. Put your sandwiches, kids' menus, and drinks on the back of the menus. Within the categories, the first two items listed and the last item in the category will be ordered the most. Put your highest profit items in these locations. You can also use larger and bold print for the items you want to stand out or even put a box or shadow around the items. Place the price of each item at the end of the description line and NOT justified to the right. This way the customer can't scan the category and choose the cheapest item without looking at the other items. Use large type, 12 point or larger (I like print even larger than 12 point) and use an easy to read font like Times Roman or Arial. Use boxes around really important items that you want to call attention to in a category. Make use of color text to make some headings stand out, but it is usually better to use black text on the small print. It is easier to read. You can add a picture of the food for even more emphasis, but be sure to use a high-quality picture. Use a professional food photographer or go to www.iStockPhotos.com and get high-quality stock photos for $1 to $4 each and you will have unlimited use of the pictures. By all means don't have the background anything except white or yellow. Colors or designs in the background make the menu hard to read. I was at an restaurant not long ago that had very light small black print on a dark red menu and in the low light of the restaurant it was impossible for me to read a single word on the menu. DON'T USE ALL CAPS IN ANY PART OF YOUR MENU. As you can see, it is very hard to read text in all caps. Make all of your prices end with a 9. If you have prices that end with .95 change them all to .99. Your sales will not suffer at all and the pennies will add up. Don't let your printer design your menu and don't give your graphic designer a free hand. Many graphic designers will make the menu fancy, but it will be hard to read. Don't use laminated menus. They are expensive and you will be tempted to not make changes as often as you should because of the expense you will incur. A good choice for your menu is to use good quality plastic covers with paper inserts. Search Google for, menu covers and you will find a lot of vendors and options to choose from. Don't make your menus too large. Large menus can knock over wine glasses and keep the guests from seeing and conversing with other members of their party. This is especially true for small tables. A size of 9 x 12 is a good choice because it will accommodate 8½ x 11 paper. If your menu starts to get too large, don't be tempted to use small print or a lot of pages, consider having a separate wine menu, kids' menu and desert menu. In most cases a separate desert menu with pictures (or a desert tray) will greatly increase the sale of desert items. By the way, be sure to bring the desert menu or desert tray out immediately after the last person in the party has finished eating. Delay even a few minutes and your desert sales will fall off rapidly. This is because regardless of how much someone has eaten, they still feel hungry for of up to 10 to 15 minutes after they have finished eating. It's easier to tempt someone with a desert when they are still feeling hungry. If you have room on the back of your menu, tell your story -- why your restaurant is special -- you wash the vegetables three times, you make your own bread and your own salad dressings, you use old family receipts, you have an award winning chef, etc. You can get software templates especially for menus which include icons and formats or your paper supplier can supply you with pre-printed themed menu paper (or search Google for suppliers), but don't go with fancy background designs. Having fancy themed designs around the text and inserting graphics in and around the category boxes is fine, but do not have your text printed on top of anything except a white or yellow background (you can use different shades of yellow for variety). Color printers are very inexpensive now and by having the ability to print your own menus and menu inserts quickly in-house gives you great flexibility in tweaking the price of items and changing the emphasis given to items to maximize your profit. Be sure to have the name of your restaurant, your address and hours printed on your menu. Sometimes people take a menu as a souvenir or they want to show it to a friend. If they do, you at least want them to know which restaurant the menu came from and how to find you so they can come back. Keep in mind that the things you can control and adjust to make your menu more profitable are, item cost, the price you charge, the placement of the item on the menu, the presentation (picture of the food) and the promotion of an item. In summary, to maximize your profit, determine your most profitable and popular items and place them on the menu in a way so they will be seen and therefore ordered more often. Tweak prices in small increments and on only a few items at a time to determine the sweet spot to maximize your overall profit. Be sure to track the results as you make changes to the menu. One last point -- Clone your winners. For example, if veal parmesan is a winner, try chicken parmesan. Maybe even try eggplant parmesan. Eggplant parmesan could be a big winner since the cost is so low and the perceived value is high. Take a look at your winners and see if there is a way to clone them.
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