If dishes are the soul of a restaurant, then the menu is a pair of talking eyes. A well-designed menu can increase turnover, while a poorly designed menu can also ruin a restaurant.

Many bosses didn't know anything about the menu when they first opened a restaurant, and they always designed it based on their own feelings or borrowed from others' menus. As a result, the menu classification was confused, the user experience was not good, and the turnover was not increased. At the same time, excellent menus can not only bring profit to the restaurant, but also have a great effect on restaurant marketing.

ONE

The menu is the more important business card of the restaurant

The word "menu" comes from Latin, originally meaning "instruction memorandum", which is a record list of the chef for memo. The menu of a modern restaurant must not only be shown to the chef, but also to the guests. We can sum it up in one sentence: "The menu is the product catalog and introduction book provided by the restaurant. It is the restaurant's consumer guide and the most important business card of the restaurant."

Among the catering business owners I have consulted, 80% of them believe that the menu can be ordered for diners, and the menu is like a piece of paper, nothing particularly important. If you understand it in this way, then your restaurant must be the same as many restaurants: the store is half-dead, does not have too much vitality, and is obviously working hard and earnestly, but the turnover is not going to increase.

And often as long as your restaurant has been cooked, your menu will remain unchanged for how long. We cannot look at the menu in a limited way. The surface of the menu is for diners to order and use. If you use the planning and design methods, a good menu is a super shopping guide. He is a top salesperson. Needless to say, everything All in it, let business become natural.

If you treat the menu as a piece of paper, then this idea may be the fundamental reason that affects the profitability of your restaurant. We must understand: the menu is the bridge between customers and the restaurant to understand each other. The restaurant can understand whether the menu design is reasonable by observing the ordering of customers and counting the ordering rate. For customers, they can learn about the restaurant’s dish characteristics, market positioning, and operating style through the menu.

TWO

The menu is to guide restaurant management

And an important tool for marketing

With the upgrading of consumption, the menu has become more than just an ordering tool, but has gradually become a marketing tool to promote the restaurant’s dishes, because the menu is the most intuitive and unobstructed display of the restaurant’s dishes and prices to customers. The manual, which connects the cash flow behind the entire restaurant, can be said to be the center of catering operations. It has almost all the characteristics, signs, product design, profit structure, etc. of each business. So the seemingly simple menu is not to be underestimated.

The menu is not only a more important business card of the restaurant, it can also be used to guide the management and marketing of the restaurant. The restaurant can adjust its management and marketing work in a timely manner based on the feedback from the guests ordering food.

For most restaurants, there are not many opportunities to advertise themselves, and many advertisements that have been heavily invested are often not able to achieve the desired results. In fact, restaurant operators have overlooked an effective form of advertising-menus.

First of all, the menu is something that every customer who visits the restaurant must read. This is like the placement of advertisements in the movie "007" series. Every viewer watching the "007" movie series is paying attention to the handsome spy James Bond. In addition to his husband and many enchanting Bond girls, he will definitely pay attention to the classic car that accompanies Mr. Bond on the battle-Aston Martin, because it is the protagonist around Mr. Bond, and it represents Mr. Bond’s consumption philosophy and life taste.

Secondly, the menu is a communication tool between the restaurant and the customer. Although there is a lot of communication between restaurant service staff and customers, and this communication is also very important, the effectiveness of this communication often depends on the quality of the service staff, which can only be achieved through good and systematic training of the service staff, otherwise it is very May produce ineffective or even negative communication. However, a seemingly "silent" menu can be an effective tool for the restaurant to communicate with customers. It will "speak" with customers to express the spiritual theme the restaurant wants to express.

THREE

Menu, equivalent to an unsigned contract

For a restaurant, a menu is equivalent to a contract that the restaurant and customers have not signed. When customers read the menu, they will take it for granted that the restaurant will provide them with the dishes on the menu, and the dishes provided by the restaurant will be consistent with the description on the menu. If this is not the case, the customer's trust in the restaurant will collapse.

For example, sometimes when customers order according to the menu, the service staff will tell them "this is not the other", which will greatly reduce the customer's dining satisfaction, and many restaurant operators will think this is a normal thing. Of restaurant operators can say that they don’t pay much attention to their commitments. It's because I don't care about my own brand.

Customer satisfaction also depends on the relationship between the value of the dish and the price. In layman's terms, there is no such thing as "expensive or expensive" for a dish, but only "worth or not". What the restaurant operator has to do is to make the value of each dish on the menu equal to the price marked on the menu, that is, to make customers feel that it is valued or even valued. Once the value and price are equal, customers will think that it is reasonable and at ease psychologically, and at the same time they will think that the dish is delicious.

When the value is greater than the price, the customer's sense of happiness will appear, not to mention the sense of reasonableness, and the customer's satisfaction will be greatly improved. Many customers report that a certain dish is not delicious, but in fact the dish is not that unpalatable. The reason is that he thinks the dish is not worth the price, that is, the value of the dish is lower than the price.

Therefore, if a restaurant wants to increase sales and profits, the least investment, the fastest and most effective way to change is to change the menu. Improving the quality of service personnel or reforming the hardware decoration of the restaurant requires huge time and economic costs, but improving the menu can achieve immediate results with a small investment. Therefore, restaurant operators must clearly understand the phrase "menu determines business".

FOUR

Three principles of profitable menu design

So if you want to make money with your menu, we must abide by the following three principles when designing the menu:

1. Be sure to dig out a differentiated "core single product" that you have mastered. With the must-order hot items of this table, you can optimize and reduce the menu around this single product.

2. There can be no more dishes, so the raw materials and the quality of the products must be strictly controlled. Only when everything is delicious will the diners feel that there is no food to order.

3. It is necessary to match the variety of dishes reasonably and optimize the structure, such as the science of the distribution of meat dishes, vegetarian dishes, soups, pots, cold dishes, fried dishes, etc. Consumers will not let him down even if they have "blind spots".

Summarize

Although a restaurant is successful, good ingredients and good taste are fundamental. But being able to make a menu that attracts customers will make you do more with less, and the icing on the cake!

Catering owners should never underestimate a small menu. It is not only the first step to attract customers to the store, but also the first step to open operations. The design of the menu is directly related to the survival of the restaurant.