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Monday, December 29, 2014

Many Menu Options vs. Few Menu Options

Your restaurant's menu is significant to your restaurant's overall success. Your menu's appearance, selection, and size all affects your business's overall demeanor. The food on your menu is a pricey investment and it’s imperative that it sells well, otherwise the restaurant has no success. Many restaurant owners try to create competitive menus by offering countless options but there are many benefits to a concise menu. Let's weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a lengthy restaurant menu compared to a menu with only a few options. When choosing the length of your menu it's important to consider price, your target audience, and customer satisfaction.
1. Watch Ingredient Costs
Purchasing food in bulk saves money. Shorter, limited menus allow you to purchase more food in bulk compared to lengthier menus that require many more ingredients. Furthermore, you can invest in a few high quality products compared to many inexpensive foods by cutting down the list of purchases required to stock your kitchen.

On the other hand, fewer choices typically result in fewer temptations from a customer's standpoint. If a customer knows a short menu well, they'll be less likely to spontaneously add an appetizer, dessert, or side. Lengthy menus on the other hand encourage customers to splurge, especially on easy up-charges like changing a baked potato to a loaded potato, adding a salad, or adding an alcoholic beverage. When it comes to menu length and pricing, it's important to consider the type of food you're selling and in turn, your target audience.
2. Consider Your Target Audience
Your target audience is easily one of the most influential aspects of your restaurant's decision-making. Expensive, quality food may be great if you own an upscale restaurant, but if you're a quick, family friendly establishment you'll want to offer cheaper options that a family can afford and be happy with. Family restaurants require more options as you have more people to please. You want to create a menu that everyone can agree on. Customer happiness = restaurant success. Upscale or themed restaurants demand a more precise menu and tend to be "special event" type of restaurant, meaning it's busy for anniversaries, graduation parties, proms, or celebrations, but not necessarily a weeknight-dinner type of restaurant.

3. Add New Items Effectively
Regardless of your restaurant's menu size, if you are attempting to add additional menu selections, consider having special menus specifically for those items, like a menu easel from Cal-Mil. This is perfect if it's just a drink option, dessert or appetizer that you're testing. It'll draw your customers attention as it will be on the table all night and demands attention. You'll quickly see if it's a menu item that is worth adding full time and is worth the cost of ingredients, or if few people try it, you know to keep it off the menu.

On the other hand, one way to have more menu options, but you don't want to offer them all the time, is to consider having seasonal menus. This tends to work better for more upscale restaurants that people are okay with ever-changing menu options. If you try this, use a menu that can easily be printed and replaced, like a Double-Fold Menu Cover that has plastic windows. These mean that you can print a new menu from a printer and pop out the old menu and put in the new one on your own. No extra printing cost, no binding costs, simple and easy.

Happy, returning customers are how businesses succeed, especially restaurants. After all, the way to a person's heart is through their stomach. If your customers seem overwhelmed by your menu, consider cutting items or asking patrons to take a survey on menu size. If your customers appear bored by limited menu options consider expanding it or offering seasonal menus. Judge your menu on how your customer's see it. And when in doubt, simply ask. 

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