Planning your menu is more than just deciding that font type, the color to use, and whether it can fit in all the information you wish to present to your customer. It is a key factor that decides whether your food service business will be successful or not. Why?
Your menu affects customer satisfaction, your bottom line, and how smoothly your kitchen operates. A menu with dishes that are delicious, diverse, and cater to different dietary needs, will have a better chance of keeping customers coming back for more. Not only that, it can help you use ingredients efficiently, reduce waste, and speed up food preparation. This can save you money and boost profits. Proper menu planning also allows you to be creative with seasonal and themed offerings and can help you establish a unique brand identity that sets your business apart from competitors.
Now that you know menu planning is crucial to your sustainability, let’s dive into 6 tips on great menu planning:
Other than being easy to handle and store, a smaller menu allows readers to decide quicker and for your team to manage smoother, you might even be able to change them up easier to accommodate a seasonal menu should you wish to spice things up.
Wish to have better control over your inventory – minimizing waste while maximizing the excitement you can offer your customers? Consider curating a fixed daily menu. This way, you will be able to estimate your ingredient usage more accurately as your customers are motivated to order a specific set of items. The best part is it can also help your customers to come back regularly to try special items each day!
With a more organized menu, it helps guests to quickly find exactly what they’re looking for, by making use of lines, headings, font sizes, colors as well as neat sections, customers can flip through your menu without the fear of getting lost. So remember to keep them arranged with clear titles such as Starters, Main Dish, Sharing Platters, Desserts, etc.
Remember to emphasize the main ingredients and highlight potential allergens while keeping them in short sentences. In your clear, yet catchy description, don’t be afraid to add what makes them special. Examples of such would be: “Crispy, juicy tenders cooked to perfection” Show more and tell less!
Proud of a certain dish or feeling confident about the hype it would create? Mark them as “recommended” so people wouldn’t miss out. Of course, a picture tells a thousand words so don’t miss out on showing a photograph of your recommendation in your menu.
Have new items that you think your customers would like? Don’t rush to add them to your permanent menu just yet. Make great use of a special menu to test them out and make your decision based on actual customer feedback. Not only that this will help make your offerings more interesting, but it will also ease your inventory planning as well!
Remember, everything takes patience to work well, so take your time to plan out your menu! We also have more tips on festive or special menu planning, read this article for more! Signing up as our member on Ajinomoto Food Biz Partner takes lesser than 5 minutes, so hit the sign-up button above and join us for more tips and perks!
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