how to make a restaurant menu. A complete guide
More than eating the appetite comes, or at least should, flipping through the menus of restaurants. Provided they are well written and take into account what makes us choose the dishes: names, suggestions and more. Of course, from the first menu that appeared in the restaurant of the Astor House, a luxury hotel in front of the City Hall in New York - 1840 - we went ahead, just to enjoy a few minutes to enjoy the interactive concept table designed by Pizza Hut.
Today that of the menu is a science that forces restaurateurs to be not only bouncers, allergists and censors of smartphone abuse, but also psychologists.
Or better, menu engineers, who study how to improve the performance of their restaurants.
We went to the bottom, preparing for the joy of those who write and those who read the menus a kind of definitive guide: from the shopping list to the price position everything you need to know to design a well written menu.
MENU: INGREDIENTS
# 1 Use the same ingredients in different dishes
A bit 'the secret of her grandmother, who with the duck roast gravy gave us the tagliatelle, so if the duck advances you can sell it all in the form of meat sauce.
# 2 Mix ingredients that have different prices
Vegetable creams with some prawns resting on them, the paper bag with the scenic fairy paper that makes flying over the small portions: when you do show everything is allowed.
# 3 Buy large quantities
Provided you have an area to store your food, the quantity quantities save on the retail cost and also on the cost of transport from the restaurant to the supplier.
# 4 Ask for advance payment discounts
In these times, your supplier will seem like a chimera and you will have good chances to accept.
MENU: HOW TO WRITE
# 1 The sandwich tactic
The first course in the menu, or the first bottle in the wine list must have the lowest price. In second place is something convenient for the customer, but has a substantial margin for the restaurateur. Afterwards you can put the most expensive dishes.
It is difficult for the customer to choose the most economical range for fear of being taken for a stinginess, usually the choice settles on the second plate of the list.
# 2 No price focus
Prices must be written in the same font as the rest of the menu, smaller and without indicating the currency.
# 3 No sales receipt
By the way, bring the prices to the plate, if they are lined up in a row on the right the receipt effect is inevitable.
# 4 Some boxes do not hurt
One out of every 10 dishes is sufficient: they serve to signal the dishes to be highlighted, those that guarantee the highest reload.
# 5 Calm with the hyperboles
If you do not want to look fake it is good to limit the adjectives in the description of the dishes. To avoid especially useless adjectives such as "fresh" next to fish, superlatives should be avoided as the worst of evils.
# 6 Combat posts
Thus the human eye reads the pages of the menu: from the center to the left and from the top to the bottom; think about it for the dishes you want to reward and those you do not like to cook.
# 7 Star, horse, dog and puzzle
Today that of the menu is a science that forces restaurateurs to be not only bouncers, allergists and censors of smartphone abuse, but also psychologists.
Or better, menu engineers, who study how to improve the performance of their restaurants.
We went to the bottom, preparing for the joy of those who write and those who read the menus a kind of definitive guide: from the shopping list to the price position everything you need to know to design a well written menu.
MENU: INGREDIENTS
# 1 Use the same ingredients in different dishes
A bit 'the secret of her grandmother, who with the duck roast gravy gave us the tagliatelle, so if the duck advances you can sell it all in the form of meat sauce.
# 2 Mix ingredients that have different prices
Vegetable creams with some prawns resting on them, the paper bag with the scenic fairy paper that makes flying over the small portions: when you do show everything is allowed.
# 3 Buy large quantities
Provided you have an area to store your food, the quantity quantities save on the retail cost and also on the cost of transport from the restaurant to the supplier.
# 4 Ask for advance payment discounts
In these times, your supplier will seem like a chimera and you will have good chances to accept.
MENU: HOW TO WRITE
The first course in the menu, or the first bottle in the wine list must have the lowest price. In second place is something convenient for the customer, but has a substantial margin for the restaurateur. Afterwards you can put the most expensive dishes.
It is difficult for the customer to choose the most economical range for fear of being taken for a stinginess, usually the choice settles on the second plate of the list.
# 2 No price focus
Prices must be written in the same font as the rest of the menu, smaller and without indicating the currency.
# 3 No sales receipt
By the way, bring the prices to the plate, if they are lined up in a row on the right the receipt effect is inevitable.
# 4 Some boxes do not hurt
One out of every 10 dishes is sufficient: they serve to signal the dishes to be highlighted, those that guarantee the highest reload.
# 5 Calm with the hyperboles
If you do not want to look fake it is good to limit the adjectives in the description of the dishes. To avoid especially useless adjectives such as "fresh" next to fish, superlatives should be avoided as the worst of evils.
# 6 Combat posts
# 7 Star, horse, dog and puzzle
A well thought out menu divides the dishes into categories, arranging them in the four quadrants of the page.
Quandrante "star": the dishes that give good earnings and like customers.
"Horse" dial: little gain but high satisfaction from customers.
"Puzzle" dial: high earnings but few orders.
"Dog" dial: little profit and low popularity among customers. (Why keep them in the menu, then?)
MENU: GRAPHICS
# 1 The cover is your face
We need to put the restaurant logo, name and a brief description, so that they associate the frog of the banner instead of the fairytale of the prince to the home cooking of Ferrara. Vadwe retro cover pre-selected in free download on the web.
# 2 Materials in line with the proposal
The rule is common sense: vegetarian restaurants will avoid the leather menu, even if it is eco. Who often hosts the brotherhood for the liberation of humanity from the demon of technology I will not have Ipad, and so on ...
# 3 Font
It is a must to think of the short-sighted, the astigmatic and the engineers. The advice is to eliminate the characters that seem handwritten, those with curls, gothic font from medieval manuscript.
# 4 Upper case
If you really need to reserve it only for the names of the dishes.
# 5 Plasticized with photos of blurred dishes
Of course, if the sauce falls on it does not get dirty, but even if it is practical, it remains unwatchable.
# 6 Handwritten straw paper is always good
From starry to home-made trattoria the menu written by hand on paper remains a way to differentiate itself.
MENU: FIRST PAGE
# 1 History of the restaurant
The question to ask before telling the story of the four generations that have managed the place is this: is it really interesting? Let's be honest: a blank sheet is more elegant than a useless story.
# 2 Summary
According to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) to examine a menu we take 109 seconds. Nobody likes to scroll through four ponderous menu folders, rather the sudoku on the placemats.
# 3 Important information
The list of suppliers, the history of a dish. All that can make us understand, untiring critics, why tortellini are better than elsewhere.
# 4 Index
If you really can not help but create a menu with biblical foliation at least enter an index.
# 5 Golden rule
The whole menu should be in two pages, which the customer sees at the same time, one on the right, one on the left. The dessert list is separate.
MENU: PHOTO
# 1 The mobile phone is bad
Nothing is a tourist trap like a menu with photos clearly downloaded from the nephew's cell phone. The money spent in a professional photographer never regrets.
# 2 Cum grano salis
Having said this, ask yourself: is it really necessary? If you really believe that the composition of your plate is original try it, but if you do the rigatoni with tomato in the ceramic holster big trucker's restaurant really think that the photo helps?
# 3 Stock photography on the Internet
Perhaps the worst of the ills is the photo of the tiramisu taken from the free database on the Internet, which does not look anything like your tiramisu. Sooner or later they will establish that it is a criminal offense.
MENU: MAKE IT ONLINE
Must have menus
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