Guide: How to Create Your Menu

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Guide: How to Create Your Menu"

Brendan Stevenson
6 years ago
Views:

1 Guide: How to Create Your Menu Guests seek out your menu more than any other element of your restaurant. The dishes, pricing, and physical appearance of your menu will play a hefty hand in determining who your guests will be, how frequently they dine with you, and how they feel about your brand. For most guests, this process begins before ever walking through the front door of a restaurant -- OpenTable s research shows that 86% of consumers always or frequently check out a restaurant s menu online before they dine out. Perhaps most importantly, the way your menu translates into sales will be the basis of your restaurant s revenue stream, making it not only a critical brand touchpoint but the key to your financial viability. Make thoughtful decisions when deciding what to put on your menu and how to present it to guests. Once you ve opened your doors, be flexible and ready to make changes once you start to receive guest feedback. Start with Trust When famed restaurateur Danny Meyer describes hospitality, he often refers to the importance of making guests feel like the restaurant is on their side. This approach builds a sense of trust, making them feel cared for on that particular visit and increasing the likelihood that they ll return. Earning the trust of guests is paramount to every restaurant, but it s particularly so when it comes to new restaurants. Guests will set their expectations based on your restaurant s initial menu, and while you work out the early kinks you ll want to ensure you re delivering on the promise of your brand. 1

2 Start with Trust cont d We wanted to win trust from our guests before anything else. I think if we d opened up the restaurant and did tasting menus or food that was a little too out there or too chef-y right away, we would have lost a lot of guests. Gavin Kaysen If you can make it work financially, price yourself just below your competitors to get traction and make guests feel like you re on their side -- but do be careful with this. Restaurants that open with menus that are priced artificially low to gain a following and then raise prices significantly months down the road often receive harsh criticism and have a hard time retaining their core guest following. This doesn t mean that you need to dumb down your concept, but it does mean that you should always be considerate of accessibility. Balance is key, and just because you don t put a particular item on your opening menu doesn t mean that it will never see the light of day. Make sure you have a mix of crowd pleasers and more complex, ambitious dishes so you can gauge guests reactions and let your kitchen and service staff find their groove. A menu that s full of lesser-known dishes, ingredients, and techniques will be overwhelming for your guests and for your team. Building trust through pricing is also important. If you re opening a fine-casual Italian restaurant, take a look at competitors in your market with similar concepts. What do they charge for a house cocktail or a signature dish? Gavin Kaysen, chef/owner of Spoon and Stable says, Learning what type of pricing is making guests feel comfortable and like they re getting value is really important. Art vs. Commerce Although what you want to do as a chef is very important, there s an art vs. commerce factor. You re running a business, and I think that the reason so many restaurants fail is because people lose perspective on that. Gavin Kaysen This all comes down to balance and your ultimate reason for opening a restaurant. Plenty of owners open restaurants that prioritize profitability above all else, and in that case, letting strategically-priced crowd pleasers dominate is the way to go. 2

3 Art vs. Commerce cont d For restaurateurs who open more visionary, chef-driven concepts, building a menu is a constant balancing act between practicality and creativity. Opening with a menu that appeals to a wide audience and then adding or removing dishes based on guest feedback will help you avoid alienating people right off the bat. Gavin says, I learned so much about our guests by walking around the dining room and just asking them what they thought of the menu and also figuring out what their basis of comparison was. What I think of as a fine-dining restaurant or a casual restaurant is very different from what the average guest at Spoon and Stable thinks, and that has a huge impact on how our menu is perceived. Building in Profitability Your menus -- food, wine, and cocktail -- and the guests who order from them are responsible for your financial success. This means that pricing must be strategic and intentional, taking product cost, balance, and perceived value into consideration. Product Cost In most restaurants, budgeted food cost should be 28-32%, though it will vary depending on market and concept. Pizza restaurants, which rely heavily on inexpensive ingredients like flour, tend to run lower food costs than concepts that rely heavily on protein, like steakhouses or seafood-focused restaurants. Wine cost will be budgeted in a similar range as food (usually closer to 27-30%) but again will vary depending on your concept and location. Liquor and beer tend to be budgeted much lower than both wine and food (which is one of many reasons it s very beneficial to have a liquor license). Restaurants with craft cocktail programs may aim for a 14-18% liquor cost, compared to your local dive bar that likely runs closer to 10-14%. Balance Is King If you know you re aiming for approximately 30% food cost, doesn t it then make sense to simply base every menu item on that calculation? Nope. We ll price chicken at $24, which gives us a 20% food cost because chicken is cheap. As a result, we re able to price pork at a lower price point with a higher food cost so that the two balance each other out. I don t want a $16 chicken main course next to a $32 pork dish. Gavin Kaysen 3

4 Building in Profitability cont d Using this example, if pork is at 35% food cost and you start to sell more of it than any other entree, that s going to push your overall food cost up. As you study your restaurant s product mixes and learn more about diner preferences, you should start to see trends in which dishes are consistently top sellers. Make sure that those items are at (or preferably below) your budgeted food cost so that they truly do balance out your value-driven menu items at a higher food cost. Sometimes it may be easier to work backwards when developing menu items. For example, if you know you re missing a poultry dish and you need it to be around $28 to be consistent with the rest of your pricing, you then know you ve got $7.80 to spend on product for the dish to ensure it s in line with your target food cost. Value Matters Sometimes it makes sense to have items on your menu that are primarily designed to add value to your guests experience or to entice diners to have a particular experience. Gavin says, We have a dry-aged beef ribeye for two on the menu for $39 per person that is not very good for our bottom line, but it looks really great when it s out in the dining room, and it makes people feel like they re getting a really great value because they are. I d rather have them know they re getting value so they feel motivated to make a second reservation and come back and order the chicken that has the 20% food cost. When you get into luxury products like caviar, white truffles, high-end wine and vintage spirits, traditional cost benchmarks tend not to apply. By bringing in specialty food and beverage offerings, you differentiate yourself, engage your guests, excite your staff, and generate press. They can also make you some money if priced strategically, but don t expect them to be your most profitable items. You ll have a hard time actually moving products like these unless you price them with value in mind. But less is actually more, here, as selling 30 orders of caviar each night at 45% food cost would actually throw off your numbers. Working with Purveyors The relationships you have with your purveyors are incredibly important. The people you purchase products from will impact everything from pricing to payment terms to ease of business. When assessing different companies in your market, look for those that prioritize customer service. Gavin says, They re not just selling me on a butternut squash what I m buying is customer service. The expectation is that it s treated like a relationship; we respect them and they respect us. During the opening process, discuss payment terms with your purveyors right out of the gate. Many purveyors will 4

5 Working with Purveyors cont d want COD (cash on delivery) or seven-day payment terms for a new restaurant, which can range from difficult to impossible for a restaurant that isn t taking in revenue yet. When opening Spoon and Stable, Gavin worked out an agreement with purveyors in which he abided by seven-day terms for a 90-day period. Once he d proven that he could be trusted to provide payment on time, suppliers agreed to give him 14 days to pay invoices. Menu Design Once you ve decided what you re going to put on your menu, work on how you re going to present it to guests. Whether you ve brought on a branding company, hired a graphic designer, recruited a talented friend, or are planning to do this on your own, there are some key considerations to think through early so you don t invest time and money into creating something that isn t operationally feasible or financially sustainable. We spoke to Carla Siegel, founder of the creative firm Agentsie based in New York City. With a Communication s Design degree from Syracuse University, a Culinary Arts diploma from The Institute of Culinary Education, and several years in the trenches of New York City s fast-paced restaurant business as Creative Director for the restaurant group of Chef Daniel Boulud, Carla provides rare and valuable perspective on creating eye-catching designs that are operations-friendly. Here are some of her top menu design dos and don ts: DO treat your menu as an extension of your brand. Make sure the presentation aligns with the formality of your concept. Paper quality, size and weight, font styles, graphics, colors, section titles, formatting, and whether you opt to use a menu cover or backing should all tell the story of your concept and add to guests experience DON T choose a menu design that can t stand on its own. As the focus on hospitality in restaurants continues to increase (a great thing!), some menus have started to become overly minimal to expand the role of the server in guiding the guest experience. Train your service team to engage with guests and guide them through the menu, but don t rely on them to translate everything from how a guest should order to what individual ingredients are. If guests can t reasonably decipher most ingredients, your menu becomes a bottleneck that hurts your bottom line. While there are plenty of inquisitive diners out there, there are equally as many who are turned off by needing to have a menu interpreted for them. DON T overuse design features like boxes. Carla says, Not every dish can be special. Once you add multiple 5

6 Menu Design cont d boxes of equal weight on a single page the items lose individual emphasis, and the guest may not understand why those things are called to attention. Pick and choose what you want to draw attention to. DO prioritize readability when choosing font sizes and styles. Carla says, Font selections will depend on the look, feel, and intention of your brand, but when it comes to the heart of the menu, a clean, legible font is a smart choice. Keep the overall number of fonts used to a minimum, making sure those assigned to communicating dish descriptions and pricing are the clearest of all. DON T opt for a multi-page menu design. If table turns are a key factor in meeting budgetary goals be sure to keep things concise. When guests have to flip through multiple pages to review appetizers and main courses, they spend more time looking at the menu and generally take longer to order. Help out your turn times by keeping all of your food items on a single page. DO consider the strategic marketing benefits of investing in a beautiful, on-brand menu. For many guests who post restaurant photos on social media sites, the attractiveness of a menu will determine whether it s a part of the picture or not. Carla says, Russ and Daughters Cafe, for example, has a striking placemat style menu that becomes a part of the branding both in the restaurant and on social media. If done correctly your menu has the capability of being a strong marketing tool beyond the walls of your restaurant. DON T build your menu in a software program that is overly complex or expensive. When you hire a graphic designer or branding company without restaurant operations experience, they re likely to prioritize beauty over practicality. Programs like Illustrator and InDesign unquestionably have a more sophisticated design capacity than Word, Publisher, or Excel, however they may be overkill. Carla says, At the end of the day, the beautiful work doesn t matter much if a manager or host isn t able to make edits easily. Designers often want to deliver something beautiful without consideration of ongoing maintenance. Maintaining costly software with an abundance of tools that you just don t need on a daily basis isn t a smart investment. DO keep the cost of your menu paper top of mind. When looking at samples, it s easy to gravitate towards thick, uniquely-sized paper with design elements like watermarks or pre-printed logos -- it is one of your most important brand touchpoints, right? True, but consider cost and practicality. The reason so many restaurants avoid non-standard paper sizes is because the cost associated with getting it cut and finding a compatible printer can really add up. 6

7 Menu Design cont d DO research laser printers before finalizing your menu design if you plan to print your menus in house. Carla says, When proposing menu designs many firms don t consider the constraints of the typical restaurant office, nor do operators know to bring these sorts of limitations to their attention in the design process. For maximum flexibility, buy a printer that has an external tray into which you can feed special sized paper. Of course, make sure that the printer you choose fits in whatever space you have available in your office. DO keep your initial paper order small. Considerable learning takes place in those first couple months of operation with regard to what s working and what s not both in operations and on the menu front. This includes how quickly you re exhausting resources like paper. If you re changing your menu frequently or needing many more menus for each service than you initially expected, it might be worth revisiting the cost per sheet so your expenditures don t get out of hand. DO be diligent about proofreading and copy editing. Errors in grammar, misspellings, and inconsistent formatting all reflect poorly on the restaurant s attention to detail. Everything, no matter how small the scale, is important. Key Takeaways 1. Create an opening menu that prioritizes building trust with guests. Make sure you have a mix of crowd pleasers and more complex, ambitious dishes. Then pay attention to what s working and what s not -- for guests, front-ofhouse staff, and back-of-house staff. 2. Strive for balance. This applies to the type of menu items you re selecting as well as the price point and cost percentage. Having a budgeted food cost of 30% for your whole menu does not and should not mean that every single item is priced based that percentage. 3. Put a few value-driven items on your menu. These will be things that don t necessarily bring the most profit to the bottom line, but they create value for the guest by giving them a unique and memorable experience. 4. Opt for a menu design that is easy to read and understand. Although your service team should be trained to help guide guests through the menu, you don t want a menu design that requires an in-person tutorial. Make sure your menu is approachable for diners who prefer less engagement. 5. Keep printing and material costs in mind. Fancy printers, expensive paper, and custom menu covers add up quickly. Make sure you re spending your money where it will really have an impact for guests. 7

OpenTable Works for You We make it easy to fill your tables, optimize your turn times, and manage your floor. Learn More Have a question? Call us today at (800) OPEN-TABLE.

8 OpenTable Works for You We make it easy to fill your tables, optimize your turn times, and manage your floor. Learn More Have a question? Call us today at (800) OPEN-TABLE. Content for How to Create Your Menu adapted from How to Open a Restaurant by Alison Arth. Download the full guide here. OpenTable, Inc One Montgomery Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 8

Payfirma Brand Guidelines. Communicating the Payfirma Brand

Payfirma Brand Guidelines. Communicating the Payfirma Brand Payfirma Brand Guidelines Communicating the Payfirma Brand 2013 Welcome! 1 This is a guide to the basic elements that make up the Payfirma brand. Have a read, it will help you get to know us a little better.