Is your menu designed to drive
the sales of your high profit items? Pick your current menu and consider the
psychology of the design and what items you are drawn towards – are these items
that you want your customers to buy or you missing a trick? While designing the
menu ensure the items are carefully constructed to persuade customers into
making certain decisions that will drive profitability across your business.
Some of the main techniques to implement in the psychology of menu design such
as positioning, colours, buzz words to capture attention, controlled costing
and much more.
Colours
across your menu
If you are using colours within
your menu design then, for an example Green implies the food is fresh whereas
orange stimulates our appetite. The use of yellow colour in your menu makes us
happy and draws our attention towards these items whereas the colour Red
encourages action and used to persuade customers to select these items.
Menu Eye Flow
It is important for you to
understand how customers read your menu so you can ensure your high profit
items are in the right place. When a customer picks up menu their eyes
typically first move to the middle before moving to the top right and then
across top left. This is also called as Golden Triangle, and design menu using
this technique where you will find dishes with the highest Gross Profit. Take a
look at your menu and arrange items in these positions.
Dish Descriptions
If you look at the menu in most
cases you can find the dish descriptions all of a similar size and they fit
with the layout of the page. A menu that has been designed to boost sales, you
can find some items with a longer description standing out from the others.
Guess where will your attention be drawn to, and also profitability of these
may be? You may have guessed these are the high profit items that the
restaurant wants you to buy.
Feeding the
Imagination
Think
of what the customers tell you while continuing with the theme of descriptions.
Use enticing adjectives such as “locally sourced”, “homemade” or “line-caught”
or are you using superlative claims such as “the world’s greatest steak” in
your descriptions.
Subconscious
Scheming
A lot of research has been carried
out a by restaurant owners to understand how customers order items which has
shown a tendency to order either the top two items or the bottom item of a
section. As a result, put the items with highest profit margins in this order.
Pricing
Placing and displaying the price
on your menu. Tucking price in a paragraph will make customers read the menu
and think less about the price. In some menus, a dotted line is drawn from
description to price but think what is does? It will draw attention to the
price and if you use £ then it resonates more heavily on the minds of your
customers. In some menus prices are written out in letters encouraging
customers to spend more money.
Limited Choices
Make sure how big is your menu
and do you use any sections to split out items? Large menus having a lot of
choices can stress out customers and lead them to make panicked choices. Splitting
menu into simple sections with not more than seven items in each section allow
customers to feel relaxed about ordering.
Negative Space
If your are filling your menu
with text then take a look at it and think where you are drawn to – your eyes
will be drawn generally towards the open spaces. The menu with savvy
restaurants filling these spaces with their high profit menu items.
Brand Image
Material used in your menu tells
customer about your brand. If a leather folder with thick paper is used then it
suggests the food is of a high quality used in high-end restaurants whereas a
locally sourced organic café may use recycled paper. Consider the quality of
your menu materials to tell your customers.
Defining your “Big
Ticket” Items
By putting the above into
practice look what works for you and understand what your high profit items
are. It can be further broken down and allow to understand the ingredient cost,
labour cost and ancillary costs and giving you a modelling tool to update
rising wage and ingredient costs using epos system. This means to your menu profitability.
