Menu Engineering In Restaurant

In the restaurant business, the term engineering refers to menu – the process of creation the perfect menu to entice customers and keep them coming back to order the same dish or try new ones. On the whole all these deeds refer to marketing.

Menu design isn’t just something that is thrown together! It’s based on strategically arranging items so the dishes the restaurant want to sell more of (or are already big sellers) are prominently displayed.[9] Menu engineering maximizes restaurant’s profitability as it subconsciously leads customers to buy what the restaurant want them to buy. The menu is the heart and soul of the restaurant – this is the reason for opening the doors each day. The menu combines concept, décor, location and food offerings

The PLOWHORSES: Popular staples, but less profitable items.

The DOGS: The least popular items that also have a low profit margin.

With clever, strategic menu engineering, the restaurant can steer diners to the stars and the puzzles.

There are some basic principles for good menu engineering and as a consequence a perfect operation of marketing.

1. Write the Language of Food. If there is a dish with ethnic label, such as an Italian name, people will find the food more authentic and evocative. Calling pasta dish with unusual name as “Carbonara with cream and eggs” has more impact than spaghetti and bacon.

Descriptive items keep customers amazed and coming back. Even if it really is just spaghetti and meatballs, diners will believe they can only get them at your restaurant, and they’ll return again and again.

According to Cornell University research using descriptive menu–item labels increases food sales and improves the attitude of customers towards both the food and the restaurant. Another study detected that the use of descriptive menu labels can raise sales by as much as 25%, compared to food items without intriguing

Paying Attention to the Scanning Path. Menu marketing is closely connected with learning of people’s physiology. There are reading patterns that can help to attract the attention of customers by the right placement of dishes. According to some researches, a third of diners are more likely to order the first item they see on your menu. Most people look at the upper-right hand corner at first, so it is reasonable to put the most profitable items in that position. Afterwards the diner looks in the upper-left hand corner. Then there is some dissention. As the scientists say, reader can go to the bottom-right or bottom-left corner, so it is beneficial to take care of the items/categories in both of these