By Izzy Kharasch
Your menu is the single most effective marketing piece your restaurant has to offer. A menu that is done well can increase the check average by more than 20 percent! This means that you can develop a great menu and increase your current sales by 20 percent without having to bring in one more guest.
I am always amazed at restaurants that have an 8 x11 sheet of white paper, filled with spelling and grammar errors, that they call a menu. The same owners are then surprised when only a few items sell, and the overall check average is far below expectations. Low check averages mean more turnover of staff, and in today’s world that is a real problem.
WHO ARE YOU?
Restaurants in the planning stages, and even those that have been open for years, have a common problem: They lose their focus on who they are. Each owner is trying to please everyone and, by doing so, is creating a menu that is too large with too many items and not enough focus on the concept.
In a recent consultation with a Mexican restaurant owner, we developed a menu based on the demographics of a medium-sized midwestern city. This meant that we considered the demographics of the potential customers in the area, their income, age, family size, etc. We created a very focused and well-rounded menu. In the appetizer section we cut down the offerings from twelve to eight. We kept the top eight sellers and then did some new plating to give the items a new look. Under soup/salad there was only one soup and one salad. To give the menu a more healthy-option spin we added 4 salads and another soup.
Once the menu was complete the owner came back and wanted to keep everything that we had — but he wanted to add a full taco section, pasta section and a vegan section, too. This would add about 15 new products to the menu while at the same time watering down the concept. We did not add the items that the owner wanted to because it was too far outside the concept. However, we did add two to three items that were in line with concept. For example, since we were increasing the salad section, the owner wanted a salad that had more of a Mexican flare with zesty chicken or beef, avocado and a spicy dressing, so we did add that.
COVID-ERA CONSIDERATIONS
Pre-COVID, the focus of menu development was to be innovative and exceptional in product and provide exceptional service to the guests who came in to dine. Before the pandemic, sales of pickup/carryout/delivery were about 2 to 4 percent of gross. Since COVID, those services can represent as much as 30 percent of gross sales.
This means restaurants must look at menu creation much differently. They absolutely want to concentrate on the great inside service they will have. However, their menu needs to be nimble enough to serve the external client quickly, have great product for them to take home — and do it all with exceptional service.
My recommendation to my clients has been, “Create the menu for the indoor diner first, then scale it back for pickup/carryout/delivery.” This means that the restaurateur understands that not every menu item travels well, and that the restaurant will only serve its best products in the appropriate places. With the Mexican restaurant client, for the delivery menu we kept all of the appetizers, all of the fajitas, removed all of the salads, and kept the top three seafood sellers.
REFINING YOUR MENU
If your restaurant has been open for a year or more, it’s time to improve the menu and make it more effective in terms of sales and guest satisfaction. When I work with clients, we start by pulling a descending sales report for the past six months so we know which items have been selling well. Before I review that report, I often ask owners and managers to pick what they believe to be the top 10 items. Most often they may get about half correct — but the reason for this exercise is to make sure everyone understands that decisions must be made based on the reality of the numbers and not just what we think.
In the COVID world, our goal has been to remove about 20 percent of the menu items, while keeping the bestsellers so that guests are purchasing those items that do well and those that are most profitable. This also makes the kitchen team more productive. They are not wasting time preparing items that guests are telling us they don’t enjoy by not purchasing those items.
GUIDE YOUR CUSTOMERS
As I mentioned, a well-written and well-designed menu can improve your restaurant’s sales by 20 percent or more. I am finding that guests want to enjoy a “taste” of a number of items when they go out to eat. It is why I usually put six to eight appetizers on a menu and make sure they are sharable. My philosophy is this: I would rather sell one appetizer to share vs. no appetizers.
I also suggest highlighting, with a box or some shading, one specialty item you want to sell because it’s a signature item and it’s profitable. Similarly, I would highlight one soup as well as one entree, basically to entice the guest. Typically these items sell well not just because we highlighted them but because guests are more likely to ask the server questions about them, creating the all-important guest/server interaction.
RESTAURANTS DON’T LIVE BY MENUS ALONE
I am finding that operations that use QR codes have lower check averages than operations that use actual menus in combination with servers. When guests look at the menu on their phone, they are not learning about the items, whether it be food or beverage. They don’t have the ability to ask questions so they order what they know, not what they might want to try.
For your menu to be effective, you must train, train, train your staff. Every server, busser and host should have tried most items on the menu. They also need to be trained on each item in each dish. The way to guarantee that you have done this well is to create a menu test. The server who is confident in their menu knowledge is the server with the highest check average.
A year ago, we had a restaurant with a check average of $18 per guest. We did a full staff menu training with menu testing. A pre-shift meeting was held every day to focus on our menu goals for the day. Today that same restaurant is running a check average of $23 per guest. Guests are spending $5 more per person because we have implemented everything I’ve mentioned, including training. This 27 per cent increase in sales for this operation equals $156,000 in sales from the current guests.
The bottom line: Menu design, development and optimization work. Put the work into doing it right and it will pay you back many times over.
Izzy Kharasch is the president of Hospitality Works, Inc. You can reach him at 224-688-3512; Izzy@hospitalityworks.com.