50 MENU ENGINEERING & DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS Brand Platform Before you allow marketing to spend any money on ads,

designs, photo shoots, and t he like, make sure they have an approved Brand Platform in place. Really, don t s pend anything on marketing/design until it s in place. It would be like starting to film a Hollywood movie before there is script in place. What s a Brand Platfor m? A Brand Platform is the summation of the foundational aspects, rules, manner isms, guidelines, definitive characteristics of how your company is to be portra yed; how it walks, dresses, talks, acts and behaves. It includes elements like logo usage guidelines, copy style guides, colors and fonts, Brand Personality de scriptions, Brand Positioning strategy, Brand Promise, and Brand Story. Think o f it like this your brand is your own little country and your Brand Platform is yo ur country s constitution. A constitution lays out the do s and the don ts. There ar e laws (your brand platform), there is an arm in charge of enforcement of those laws (your marketing team), and there is an arm in charge of judging when a law has been broken or not (your executive team). You can make the laws exactly how you want them it s your country after all. However, if you are emperor of a coun try without laws, you can expect chaos. Likewise, if you allow the team to star t designing menus without a Brand Platform in place you can expect a degree of c haos. Having laws and rules for your brand doesn t limit creativity any more than having a canvas restricts an artist. In fact, it helps focus the efforts. Meaning of Color As humans have evolved we have associated deep meaning to colors. Colors can hav e a subconscious impact on our perceptions. For instance, blue is associated wit h trust (you ll notice many financial institutions use blue) and is also a relaxin g color. Green is the most commonly found color in nature so is can signify fres hness and renewal with the right hue (some hues of green can signify sickness an d ill so pay close attention with the use of greet). Red signifies exuberance, exc itement, and encourages action. Yellow communicates happiness, optimism and enli ghtenment. Every color in the spectrum has a meaning and therefore it is importa nt to consider the use of colors not just in your logo design and interior desig n, but also in your menu design. Appropriately used, you can conjure certain fee lings and perceptions. Use of Color Armed with a knowledge of the meaning of color you can use certain colors to conju re the feelings and motivate behavior. For instance limited use of red can call attention to high-margin items you want to move. Orange stimulate the appetite w hile brown communicates nature and Earthy. The color variation (lighter backgrou nd) for this menu call attention to the high margin items for the category and a ttract the guests attention to them which can lead to a significant shift in men u preference scores. Food Photography For some concepts it makes sense to put high resolution photos of menu items in the actual design. More commonly you see this practice in fast-food through to l ower price-point casual dining operations. Photos are one of the best merchandiz ing techniques you can incorporate into your menu but it must be done tastefully . There must be a truth in advertising . For instance, while the food can and shoul d be stylized (professional food stylist) it shouldn t mislead in terms of quantity of portions or quality of ingredients. Photo shoots can be expensive. Large chai ns can easily spend up to $10,000 per photograph on professional shoots. There a re some well-respected food photographers that can do shoots for more in the ran ge of $2,500 $5,000 USD plus travel and get quite good results. Just buying an e xpensive camera is not a strategy for food photography. There is a tremendous am ount of skill and experience needed to produce food photography in today s age tha t will hold up to what consumers are used to seeing from the big guys. If your b udget does not allow for a professional food photographer (specialized photograp

her not just any old portrait photographer will do), then it is best to leverage the other merchandizing techniques until the budget allows for an investment in digital assets. Nested Pricing We have all seen those Chinese restaurant menus with the dot-dot-dot leading fro m a generic menu item name on the left to the price on the right. This encourage s customers to view your restaurant as a generic commodity and read from right t o left instead of left to right. The goal is to get them to scan the unique item names and well-written descriptions and make their choices based on what sounds /looks good; considering the price secondary not primary. Nested pricing is wher e the menu price comes after the description and is nested into the description us ing the same size font. After a period to end the description, there should be t wo spaces and then a price (without dollar signs). Don t Use Dollar Signs When dollar/currency signs are used on the menu they become the most repeated it em on the menu. The currency sign symbolizes money and therefore communicates th e restaurant is just a business out to make a profit. Without a currency sign, g uests still understand that any numerals beside a menu item are the price. This makes for a more subtle communication of the price of the item and keeps the gue st focused on the experience itself more than the cost of the experience. Different Languages Restaurants in Europe and those catering to heavy international traffic are alre ady well aware of the importance and benefit of menus in various languages. Some chains who are based in non-transient markets may forget the importance of prov iding menus in different languages for new markets they may be entering. For ins tance, we had one client in Mexico who was used to offering menus in English but had overlooked the importance of having menus in Japanese also when they opened their first mega-location in Hawaii (Japanese tourists are a highly lucrative a udience there and many businesses offer brochures and menus in Japanese). Likewi se, a restaurant chain starting to opening franchise locations in the Middle Eas t should also consider menus in Arabic and potentially Russian. If more than 15% of a prospective audience speaks another language you should strongly consider menus in that language. iPad & Other Tablets Digital technologies are helping drive down the cost of printing in virtually ev ery industry. Makes sense it would be applied to menus. While it is still cost p rohibitive to offer digital paper to every customer, there are some specialty me nus which can be converted to digital with a tablet such as an iPad or Kindle. T his could be used for wines, signature cocktails, menu nutritional information, or even specials. Sure, why not film a 15 second clip of a new signature dish an d have the server bring the tablet to the table and play a short clip? Okay, may be that s over the top, but when you look for ways to apply the advantages of digi tal paper to traditional paper/menus, you will find some creative uses. Digital Menu Boards Just as the old timey photo books gave way to motion pictures, so too will stati c printed menu boards fall to the more engaging digital menu boards. Digital men u boards are particularly popular at QSR s and fast-casual operations, but there a re also still uses for casual dining operations with printed menus. Digital boar ds can be used for promomotional messaging (remember the old chalk boards when y ou walked in an Applebee s?), training, and for zone merchandizing. Menu design mu st now take in to consideration design techniques for printed output, for static digital output, and for animated digital output (there are considerations uniqu e to each execution). Negative Space

Amateur marketers have a natural inclination to say everything they can in an adve rtisement. This is largely influenced by the old days of pay-by-the-column inch. Since they bought space they wanted to fill it. Notice though, when one area of a newspaper is copy-heavy with lots of text all over and then there is a negative space which is free of copy (think of an Apple advertisement), then the eye is drawn there. The eye goes to the negative space. Likewise on a menu when you hav e a lot of items and copy and are trying to cram a lot on to one page, the human eye will look for a starting point. When you put a pocket of negative space, yo u pull the eye there. So, in limited use coupled with other menu merchandizing t echniques putting negative space around an item can call attention to it and hel p you sell it. Icons Before language, people communicated with grunts and images. Iconography. A sing le image could be a full expression. The power of icons to communicate has not b een lost in human evolution. An icon can be used to both communicate a point (su ch as a chili pepper next to a hot item) but can also be used to signify the imp ortance of a signature item. Both Google and YouTube have summarized what s liked with just a single thumbs up or thumbs down icon. You could use popular icons su ch as a chili or thumbs-up, but you could also create your own branded icons and give them meaning/symbolism. Icons are particularly good to use when there is l imited space (i.e. road signs often show it versus say it; sometimes menus shoul d too). As with all merchandizing techniques, use these sparingly. Kindergarten Class If you use too many menu merchandizing techniques on one page it is the equivale nt of a classroom of crazy kindergartners all screaming and waving at the same t ime to get the attention of the teacher. There are at least thirty (30) go-to me nu merchandizing techniques we use on restaurant menus to help influence menu pr eference scores and purchasing behavior, but we rarely use more than two (2) on a page and almost always stay under five (5) techniques on the entire menu. If e verything is important than nothing is important. Focus on just a few key things you want to emphasize on your menu. At maximum, do not merchandize more than tw o (2) items per menu category. High Rent Areas Think of your menu as a property development and yourself as the master develope r. Where would you put the high-rent condos and where would you hide the necessa ry utility stations? Every inch of your menu should be paying its fair share of rent. For those menu items worthy enough to get the high-rent areas on the menu, they need to be paying what the space is worth or surrender it to another menu item that can pay a higher rent. Put your menu on a grid and assign value to eac h section based on how the eye flows over a menu. In a three panel menu, for ins tance, the eye will typically go to the middle of the middle panel first, then t op right section of the far right panel, then across the top to the far left sec tion of the far left panel. This is sort of the Golden Triangle of your menu. Pu t high-margin signature items in these spots. Then, within each category within each panel, keep in mind that usually the #1 and #2 listed item in any section w ill be the top selling items in quantity (sort of like being on the top floor of a luxury condo) but then there are also those who like to rent the ground-floor units (which is why on some menus you will see the pattern that the last listed item in a category is #3 in popularity for that category. Your menu items are r enting valuable space from you. Make sure they are paying their fair share or se nd them an eviction notice. Copywriting Copywriters with big ad agencies can get $50,000 or more for a single three or f our word tagline. The reason clients would pay so much is they understand that a well-worded headline, or tagline, or block of copy can make a product stand out and produce millions in returns. Copy can make or break a brand and a menu. A f

un visualization for helping your menu team think about copy-writing is to have them imagine the menu as an online dating site. Each item on the menu is marketi ng itself for a date with your customers. The menu item wants to be found and or dered. Your job is to help them be positioned in the best possible light. Menu i tems can t speak for themselves so visualize each of your menu items in your kitch en reliant on your description of them to get a date. The menu description is so rt of like the online dating site profile. It should reflect the personality (se e Brand Personality), have a catchy headline, be short and to the point while st ill being communicative and compelling, should be accurately descriptive (truth in advertising), should be creative to stand out from the rest and not be boring /mundane, should say more than the obvious. Each menu item needs its elevator pit ch summed up in a sentence or two. Concise and compelling copy sells. Short versus Long Descriptions Humans are conditioned to notice what s different. When they see that most of the menu items have a short sentence description but then there is one in a box (or other merchandizing) and it has a longer description than the rest, they assume it must be more important. If the copy is well-written, it will draw them in. Th is is an excellent technique for selling signature items where you truly are doi ng something unique. Highlighting Specials As my friend Jim Sullivan famously said, You can have the best product in the wor ld but if nobody knows about you ve still got it . It s true; customers can t buy what t hey don t know about. Limited Time Offers and menu specials are a great way of tes ting new items before they go on the full menu and also testing different price points and other menu engineering strategies. But how to you highlight what s spec ial? Well, one of the biggest things is to make sure you re not highlighting too m uch at once. If everything is important nothing is important. We ve all felt a smi le slowly fade as a waiter droned on and on about tonight s specials mentioning 2 soups, 3 appetizers, 4 entre s with multiple preparation styles they might as well just read the whole menu to us, right? Well, look at how the big guys do it whet her on the QSR side like a Starbucks or the high end of fine dining. If Starbuck s has something special, every bit of in-store marketing is focused on that one item from the bathroom posters to the window clings. And in the fine dining rest aurant, if the chef has much to be proud of, he doesn t have all the items listed off, he instead creates a very special chef s tasting menu. The more you focus on one item, the more special you make it. Season s 52 Season s 52 is the new darling of Darden Restaurants. Darden as many of you know i s the world s largest casual dining restaurant chain (other brands include Olive G arden, Red Lobster, Bahama Breeze, Capital Grill, etc). Darden will only invest in a concept if they believe it has at least a $1 billion market potential. Whil e there is much to point to as innovative with regard to Season s 52 and while the example of their dessert program has been lauded quite a bit already it is wort h mentioning again just how good of a job they did with their dessert program. W hile most restaurants have less than 3% of their revenues derived from the desse rt case and have dismal capture rates (number of customers who opt for dessert as a percentage), Season s 52 has been reputed to have dessert capture rates of as mu ch as 80%. Rather than sell a 2-pound cake for $7.95 as many dated casual dining players still did, Season s 52 offered an assortment of fresh desserts in a taster size for just $1.95. This was the casual dining restaurant equivalent of putting those candies and lifestyle magazines at the grocery store checkout you couldn t miss them and it is an easy indulgence. To my dismay, many casual dining players have tried to just knock-off the Season s 52 program rather than learn the deeper lessons is offers about innovation, merchandizing, impulse purchases, being fir st, and challenging conventional wisdom. They looked at desserts in casual dinin g how Steve Jobs looked at mobile phones and set out to not just do something bet ter , but do something with fresh-eyed enthusiasm and entrepreneur-ism in the spir

it of innovation. Exterior Menu Displays Imagine going to the grocery store and buying items off the shelf with no packag ing; you don t know completely what s inside until you get it home. Well, for many, going inside a restaurant they know nothing about feels the same way. They just keep walking. But, when a restaurant has invested in an exterior that communicat es what can be found on the inside, and then offers a menu outside, then a passe rby can be converted into a new customer. In this post, I am referring not just to the exterior facade though, I am referring to the menu boards. Far too many r estaurants either don t offer exterior menus or they leave the area outdated; usin g old menus, cluttered with dusty trinkets, etc. Think of the exterior menu boar d like you have hired a salesperson to stand outside of your restaurant and gree t potential customers passing by and to explain what your restaurant is all abou t. You may decide to look at this investment differently and even go so far as d igital displays, or interactive kiosks, or something even more creative and bran d-appropriate. Menus To Go People are more on the go today than ever. It is important that your menu be abl e to go wherever your customers go. This could mean an email-friendly version of your menu, visible on an iPhone or Android mobile browser, can be faxed (yes, s ome people still use it), be available as a take-away menu, and some would say e ven go so far as making sure someone can Tweet your menu. Naming Menu Items Naming your menu items creatively can help express the brand personality and pos itioning strategy in a compelling way. For instance, if you are committed to sus tainable farming, perhaps the Chicken Parmesan could be called the Free-Range Chick en Parmesan (probably the least creative example that could be used here, but hop efully illustrative nonetheless). In addition to working in adjectives that bett er describe the item, you could also try other variations like naming an item af ter guest, famous local, or important growing region, etc. Menu item names and copywriting are two of the best ways to communicate your bra nd personality, positioning strategy, promise and story. NOTE: One of the areas of law that will really heat up in the future is Intellectual Property. It s an ar ea of law concerned with protecting ideas, copyrights, patents and the like. So, once you have those really fun and unique names, consider getting them protecte d (much the way McDonald s did with the Big Mac and Burger King did with the Whopp er). Trademarks & Copyrights You will notice that everywhere Burger King uses the word Whopper they have their trademark registration notice along with it. If you are using ANY words, phrases , images, recipes, or other intellectual property that you don t want others to us e freely, you really should seek the help of an intellectual property attorney a nd add the proper protections into your operation (on menus, in employee manuals , etc). There are a lot of copycats in the restaurant industry and intellectual property will keep heating up as a field of law impacting the restaurant industr y. Please be sure those working on your menus and other creative materials are a ware of the laws and your policy and that you have protections in place for your intellectual property. Pricing Strategies An entire book can be written on menu pricing strategies. One of the questions I m often asked though is how to handle the cents. Should we round it up or down? S hould we use $.99 or $.95. What if the target cost meant a menu price of $8.25? Personally I believe many of these issues to be rooted in the overall concept st rategy, not just the semantics of menu pricing. Meaning, it would be much more a

ppropriate for a high-end martini lounge to round their prices to flat amounts v ersus quirky pricing (i.e. it s $11, not $10.95; but if the same costs were true f or family oriented casual dining restaurant the more concept-appropriate approac h may be the other way around). That said, pricing is both an art and a science. The science part should be root ed in achieving target theoretical food costs and profit margins. The art part o f it though is how to make the science part more appetizing and appealing. A res taurant that charged $7.43 for an item just because that is the exact price that would give them exactly a 31% food cost would be peculiar. Generally, my recomm endation is to use as few digits as possible and never use a dollar sign. I also frequently recommend to round up and offer a better value than to round down an d pinch both the restaurant s profits and customers experience. Also, price the me nu in such a way that it cannot be easily compared or price shopped against the competition. I have frequently seen restaurants that were overall lower than the ir competitors but perceived as higher just because having a poor pricing strate gy on just a few key items. Advertising on Restaurant Menus Of all of the restaurant chains in the world, no other chain comes close to matc hing the average unit volume of Cheesecake Factory. Across 135 locations they av erage $10.9m each. It was certainly a surprise then to see them selling ad space in their menus for other retailers. While running F&B marketing for a luxury ho tel we even bought ad space to promote the new $20m spa. Boy was it expensive. R ecently, I also saw a small oyster bar in my hometown had sold not just space in their menu, but even their table tops virtually everything was for sale. My opinion on menu ads is mixed and depends heavily on the concept in question. For the right concept though, this can be a great way to forge new relationships in the community while also getting all of your menu production costs covered. Some actually turn a small profit they invest back into marketing Supplier Logos and Sponsorships There are sponsorship dollars available to restaurants that allow the branding o f a supplier to make its way on to your menu. Product Placement is hot again in Ho llywood and on TV again and has long been common in the restaurant industry. The way this works is a supplier either pays you a fee to sponsor content on your men u, or in some cases the suppliers product is so well-branded and liked that a re staurant asks to use it just to reinforce a quality message to their consumers. For instance, Jose Cuervo may be willing to pick up the tab to run a new drinks menu if their product will be heavily/prominently featured. Or, another example could be the use of the Oreo or Godiva logo and messaging at a Cold Stone Creame ry to leverage some of the suppliers brand equity. In some cases, this can be a good way to reinforce quality and credibility; but it must be done tactfully. In the case of this sample menu, we incorporated the logos of premium beers to pai r them with signature pizzas as a means of increasing check average and position ing the restaurant as a higher end Cerveceria. Marketing Cooperatives Your suppliers generally want you to sell more and they are often willing to put up some money to help you do that. Some of those old Coca-Cola and Budweiser pr omotional signs are now worth a fortune. Depending on your restaurant volume and the demographics/psychographics of your core audience, you may be a good candid ate for cooperative funds from vendors. The deals are usually commensurate to th e size, scale and negotiating skills of the restaurant company and supplier. The cooperative program could come in the form of your wine distributor paying t o print new menus, or a large vendor offering a rebate that may be used for mark

eting, or could even be a jointly sponsored promotion or special event. One of o ur clients received $60,000 per year in cooperative advertising funds from a cre dit card company ($40m run on that one card type). The only stipulation for rece iving the cooperative advertising funding was that their logo be used on any of the ads or promotional materials. I mention this in the context of menu design b ecause it could have an impact on future menu designs and is a consideration whe n looking at new LTO s, long-term purchasing contracts with minimum volume require ments, and also finding that additional funding for marketing and menu improveme nts. Readability Something I ve seen time and again with menu design is for a proper font size to b e sacrificed to fit a design or target number of pages/panels on a menu. It s unde rstandable how this happens. It starts off with a goal of having a four panel me nu and so the designer is fed copy and content as it comes available from the cu linary and marketing teams. Often the team is on a tight deadline and gets a des igner started before everything is in order to compress the timetables. The amat eur designer starts plugging in the content as it is fed to her and spends 50% 75% of their budgeted time for the project fussing over getting the loose conten t to flow nicely over the four panels allotted and responding to the no, use this new description and price instead audible plays that occur along the way. Then, right there at the end, the teams all realize there is too much content to fit in the predetermined page count. What comes next is they start squeezing, s hrinking, and tweaking until ultimately the reduce the size of the font and thro w out a few pieces of content or merchandizing so they hit the self-imposed dead lines and arbitrary page counts. The resulting menu is then hard to read and, wh ile perhaps on time and on budget, the team collectively feel as though they hav e been put through the wringer and just barely averted catastrophe. If you get a menu that uses a tiny font, you can venture a guess it got there something like described above. Understandable, but also unacceptable. The last minute rush and fussing with designers is common but not the best appro ach for menu engineering and design. It s better to build in the requisite time to do things right so that all of the many considerations that go along with an ef fective menu strategy can germinate and render the highest potential for your re staurants. As it relates to readability, beyond the font size there are also oth er considerations such as the font style (certain fonts hinder readability while other promote it), the lighting where the menus will be viewed, the audience th at will be reading the menus, the paper and/or backgrounds if any that will be u sed in the final production. Brand Personality The way a brand walks, talks, dresses, acts and behaves are all characteristics described in the Brand Personality. Is your brand playful, whimsical, and funny? Or is your brand serious, refined, cultured and sophisticated? Once you have ac curately and fully articulated the brand in your overall brand platform and defi ned its personality, decisions and ideation around items such as menu design and production have a comparison point to evaluate against. The way you dress your br and should be a reflection of its personality. For instance, the brand personali ty of Senor Frogs is funny and fantastical. The environment is loud and carnival -like. So, for their menus we created a special water-filled menu that the iconic frog floated in, included a whistle on each menu (to call your waiter um, if you re familia r with Senor Frogs you understand this is part of the charm), and then also deve loped bar menus in the shape of lily pads. Commissioned by TGIFriday s to develop new bar menu concepts we presented ideas ranging pop-up menus with interactive t abs and dials, an audio menu that sung certain items, and a menu requiring 3-D g lasses. I think in the end all of the concepts were shot down but did influence

a national ad campaign. Ultimately though, the point is to think creatively and come up with innovative new menu approaches that are tethered by the brand platf orm (not tethered by internal politics or what the competition is doing). In the entertainment industry, the more distinctive and appealing a personality the mo re likely they are to be noticed and become a celebrity. Add talent and that cre ates a career with staying power. The same is true for the restaurant industry c ommunicate a distinctive and unique personality to standout, back it up with tal ent, and then you can leave competing on price to the other guys. Charismatic br ands with personality don t have to compete on price. The Brand Story There is a saying famous among copywriters Tell me quick and tell me true, not ho w this thing came to be, but what the darn thing does for me . What that means is that customers want to know the story of your brand, but they want the story to be one they can relate to and is unique. Humans think, relate and communicate be st when in the form of story. It is universal and common among all civilizations and cultures. We love a great story. The menu is a wonderful place to tell your abbreviated story. We can all agree that word of mouth is the best kind of marketing, but surprisin gly few foodservice companies take proactive steps to help shape and stimulate w ord of mouth. Of course, great execution within the four walls of a restaurant i s one of the best ways to get buzz circulating, but in today s competitive world i t takes a little more amplification for buzz about your restaurants to reach a t ipping point and go viral. If your brand hasn t quite hit that tipping point yet, the brand story may need some refinement. If, however, you do have a compelling brand story be sure to put it on your menu so every customer you serve has the o pportunity to help you spread that compelling story about your company around to all of their family and friends. The Brand Promise A brand is a promise, not something that happens after mountains of money have b een poured into advertising. While there are many dimensions to a brand promise, a core area to address is the set of promises made with regard to the menu. One of the most recognizable menu promises is the Chipotle Food with Integrity mantra . This concept of food with integrity permeates through all areas of the company from purchasing methodology to packaging. It is a great illustration of how a p ositioning strategy, brand personality, brand promise and brand story all culmin ate together to render a very commercially appealing and successful restaurant b rand. There are many other examples of how a brand promise has influenced menu strateg y but another example I like to use is a Florida-based seafood restaurant (multi -concept operator) who makes a promise of fresh seafood. Since every seafood res taurant promises fresh seafood, saying that alone is an toothless promise it s mor e just the token to get in to the game than a unique brand promise or positionin g attribute. So, to raise the stakes and put more meat on their promise, they pr int on the menu the name of the vessel that caught the fish and even the depth o f water and location from where the fish was caught. Now that s really making a pr omise that few others are willing to match. A bold and compelling promise gets a ttention. The closer the execution/delivery is to the publicly made promise the stronger the brand. As you endeavor to engineer, design and rollout your next ne w menu, look for ways to more powerfully communicate your brand promise and pers onality. Also look for inconsistencies of promises made and actual delivery on t hose promises. Sometimes, over periods of revisions and spans of time without fo cus on previous promises, an inadvertent drifting can occur that puts a wider ga p between the promise and execution. It is the job of all the stakeholders withi n the company to consistently monitor the relationship of promises made and prom ises kept. In the end, everyone within the company is proportionally responsible and rewarded.

Brand Positioning In marketing, you don t merely want to be considered the best of the best, you wan t to be considered the only one who does what you do. As Winston Churchill famou sly said, Once you have a point to make, don t try to be subtle or cleaver; hit the point once, twice and then a third time with a tremendous whack . Applied to bran d positioning, this means that once you have zeroed in on what makes you differen t as opposed to better the job next is to reinforce that message at every touch-poi nt possible. Applied more specifically to menu design, this means communicating what makes your restaurant different in a way that also expresses the personalit y and promise of the restaurant. The approaches therefore are dramatically diffe rent and entirely unique to each and every individual restaurant brand. In the case of one high-end restaurant client (the most expensive restaurant ope ning in Florida history), the message was about engaging all of the senses and s howcasing El Bulli inspired Alta Cocina in an environment that is decadent moder n luxury and sophistication. To communicate the positioning, we were commissione d to create heat sensitive menus and press kits that, under the warmth of touch would reveal hidden messages and art. In addition to the sense of touch, the sen se of smell and sound were also engaged with a sound chip embedded in each unit and an aromatic fabric. The intent was to create a sense of discovery, engage th e senses, and invite the customer to more carefully observe their environment an d experience. Now the budget for this project was well above average for sure, b ut the intent is the same regardless of budget to use the menus as yet another o pportunity to communicate your point of difference and to impress upon your cust omers that you pay attention to the little details. The wow is found in the little details. More often than not, the best impressions are made not by spending big budgets but by thinking creatively and offering something unique that renders a very brand-relevant and customer-oriented experience to your guests Location Considerations for Multi-Unit Operators Multi-unit restaurant operators have many additional considerations that must be factored in to their menu engineering and design planning. This includes issues such as different languages, market-level pricing variations, market-level avai lability/appeal considerations (for instance, a hamburger doesn t sell in India as well as a veggie burger sells just as a veggie burger won t sell as well in the U SA as a hamburger, etc), fulfillment issues (getting the new menus to all of the locations around the world and implemented on time; programming point of sale s ystems; training; operational issues spanning the gap from their best performing units/managers to the poorest performers; etc); and even issues such as manneri sms and cultural considerations (such as Ronald McDonald bowing in Asia instead of waving). For chains with diversely located restaurants additional complications arise due to political influences and governmental agencies (such as some markets demandi ng menu labeling, banning certain kids marketing and menu approaches, and also c oncerns such as restrictions on ingredients no use of pork products or proteins with animal by-products in certain parts of the Middle East, etc). Those who are a lready operating in wide and spanning territories know these issues (and many mo re) all too well. I mention them here primarily for those emerging brands who ma y be tempted into prematurely jumping great distances with new openings (cherrypicking markets rather than growing in concentric circles) as just a sampling of cautionary considerations to factor into the decision making process.For QSR s and fast-casual operators who use menu boards predominantly, new digital menu board technologies solve a host of past headaches such as market-variations and fulfil lment Menu Durability The design and production of your menu is largely influenced by the manner and e nvironment in which it will be used. For instance, menus at a pool bar should ha

ve an Aqueous coating (or be waterproof), be easy to read in bright light, poten tially have a U.V. coating or treatment to keep from fading, and be of a heavier weight to keep from blowing away. All menus should be easy to clean or replace. Far too many restaurant menus come with a side of what they guy before you had for dinner. Menu covers with too many cracks and crevices (like those el cheapo vinyl slip c overs) are like a catchers mitt for food particles and grease. There is a cost/b enefit analysis to run based on your operation to determine if it is better to i nvest in high quality materials that will have a long shelf life or to gear up f or a rapid replacement of menus (or even disposable menus intended to last just one shift versus years). Custom Menu Covers Menu covers can run anywhere from $2 each for reduced quality vinyl slip covers to $75 or more each for hard bound designer covers. The famous Burj Al Arab in D ubai presents its menu in an eel skin wrapped book with a large and beautiful Mo ther of Pearl inset in each. If I had to guess I d say those were around $300 each (so for a 150 seat restaurant that s $68,000 with overruns). At The Breakers, the fine dining restaurant L Escalier uses $300 Versace flatware and the dining room chairs are upwards of $1,000 each. These restaurants appeal to some of the worl d s wealthiest people who expect every touch-point of the restaurant from the door knobs on the entrance to the menus they hold to the food, of course to be truly world-class. Naturally, in these environments, one can spare little expense especially when i t comes to the weight, touch, balance, design, and material they put in their ha nds to make their selections. It is a reflection of their brand. On the other en d of the spectrum, a vinyl slip cover also communicates a brand and it may say e xactly what is intended. Vinyl says economy whereas mother of pearl says indulgent luxury . That s the key though every touch-point of your restaurants must communicat e the brand from the menu covers to the way the phone is answered. Should you us e a very fun a whimsical menu cover, or mother of pearl, or just print out a new menu each and every day on a quality paper in the back office the answer is alw ays rooted in the brand personality, brand promise, brand positioning, and brand story. Menu Engineering One of the most important considerations with regard to menu design is to start from a foundation of knowledge and analysis gained through the complete Menu Eng ineering process. Design can help with aesthetics and even influence menu prefer ence scores, but the real rubber-on-the-road for menu profitability is uncovered through Menu Engineering. Personalized Menus On a recent trip to Thailand I was asked at hotel check-in which paper I would l ike to receive daily. I had wondered how the hotel was able to get a daily newsp aper from the United Kingdom to my room each morning on an island on the Andaman Sea, but then when the first one arrived I was even more perplexed wondering ho w they were able to also get my name on each and every page of the paper. It was like my own private edition paper. It struck me if the hotel could do this each and every morning with a 100 page newspaper, why couldn t some of our restaurant clients offer personalized menus to large groups or private parties? It s such a n ice touch and for very little extra cost there is much more wow factor. The wow is always in the little details like this. Then I remembered I had recei ved such a menu years before at a private club in Florida and also remembered th at at a luxury hotel I used to market we had a resident calligrapher that would crank out ornate and personalized thank you notes and special invitations. Beaut iful! Sometimes the best ideas for one industry are ideas that have been around

for years in another segment of the industry or totally other industry all toget her. In this case, the personalization of luxury hotels offers an underutilized approach for restaurant marketing especially as it relates to large groups, cate rers, business to business marketing, showing special appreciation for important customers. Personalized menus and invitations make a guest feel special and are more reflective of the truest sentiment of hospitality much more so than a ligh t weight paper coupon stuffed in the back of the Sunday newspaper or metered pos tage mailbox stuffer. Table Tents One very notable casual dining chain has banned the use of table tents and cut o ff table top marketing options for their marketing department. In some respects, I can see the rationale and in fact agree with it. Table tents have deteriorate d in terms of both quality and content to the point that they become unnecessary clutter. We ve all see those flimsy, floppy, tattered and torn table tents with a little bit of the steak fajita from the guests before still clinging on to one corner. We ve also all seen those hard acrylic or Plexiglas table tents sponsored by a name-brand supplier pushing some ill-advised discount offer or ill-conceive d happy hour program. In this vein, I can completely agree with the top brass of the not-to-be-mention ed restaurant chain for taking table tents off the table, so to speak, for the m arketing department. If it can t be done right, better not to do it at all. That s aid, zone merchandizing is an incredibly powerful tool within the restaurant mar keters arsenal and the table is one of the most important zones in the zone merc handizing toolkit. In this light, both are right the executives for disallowing poorly executed table tents and the marketers who are fighting for permissions a nd budgets to run professionally conceived table tent programs that are rooted i n and reflective of the brand personality and positioning strategy. When table t ents litter or clutter a table top, they should be pulled and not allowed back i nto the system until the head of marketing is willing to take personal responsib ility for superior execution (both in terms of quality and content of the table tent but also in terms of operational protocols working with your operations dep artment). It s hard for marketing to effectively fight for those mandated sales in creases with one arm behind her back. That said, the fight should still have som e ground rules and that should include a clear set of parameters on what can be done to the table top in terms of marketing. Menu Stuffers We ve all that that frustrating experience of picking up a nice magazine and havin g an explosion of paper pour out with pesky business reply cards and subscriptio n forms. While putting in a bunch of loose cards, or a stiff card with perforate d tear sheet, or oversized page with a cologne sample may force us to dealing wi th the marketing message, it can also cause undue frustrations and detract from the actual content of the magazine. Similarly, while menu inserts and stuffers c an help call attention to a special new item or offer, it shouldn t be done at the cost of convenience and ease of use for the guest. Properly executed, menu stuf fers can be effective and also still be unobtrusive. New Menus: How Often? Globalization and the emerging food shortage crisis are wreaking havoc on food p rices. In 2011 menu prices are expected to increase at least 8% in restaurants a nd costs for many restaurants are going up at far faster rates. While you should n t react to food price increases on a day by day or hour by hour basis as the shi ft, you do need to analyze your menu and produce a new menu at least twice per y ear. The average restaurant profitability is a razor then 5% so dramatic fluctua tions in costs which are sustained over long periods of time can not only erode margins but can put a restaurant company into the red and cause debts to mount q uickly.

Beyond the important financial motivations to review and adjust your menu on reg ular intervals, there is also the equally important factor of guest satisfaction (influenced both by factors within your control such as speed of service, quali ty and consistency of execution, etc., and also external factors such as shiftin g consumer behavior and emerging trends). Some restaurants are already geared up to produce a new menu each night; some each quarter/season; and some have 18-mo nth or greater planning curves. There is no one size fits all when it comes to h ow often to conduct a full menu analysis or rollout new menus. Suffice to say, b ased on your operation, there is a sweet spot for timing just like timing that p erfect souffl. More often than not though, restaurant companies tend to leave the menu in place without proper analysis for too long of a stretch and burn signif icant profits as a result. At a minimum for high volume independents through lar ge regional chains the menu analysis work should be completed at least twice per year. Placemats Depending on your concept and format, placemats may be an appropriate extension of your menu and marketing strategy. Naturally, a marketing-oriented placemat is not appropriate in a table cloth restaurant, but if you have a QSR or fast-casu al operation placemats may be at the center of your zone merchandizing efforts. Placemats can sometimes be viewed as an extension of the menu (such as rotating with the limited time offers you re featuring or as a stand-alone glossary of term s). Other uses include data capture cards/tear-outs, telling your brand story, o r recognizing special customers, employees or events. Keep content on placemats fresh plan to rotate the messaging and design at least quarterly (every 4-8 week s is ideal). Glossary of Terms Today s consumer loves to learn something new about food, drink, and fun little fa ctoids about food history and terminology. If you feature unique ingredients or preparation methods in your restaurants consider offering a glossary of terms. T his will help make the menu more approachable, engage guests, stimulate word of mouth promotion for your restaurants, and help you get credit for your best attr ibutes. While guests have perhaps ordered it dozens of times, they may not be ab le to as easily explain to others what an Aioli is or answer whether Burgundy is a region or a varietal. The approach to informing guests should mirror your overall brand personality an d positioning so what works for one might not be appropriate for another. For in stance, Caf Tu Tu Tango offers a glossary of menu terms as a placemat and since t he restaurant is themed as an artists loft the glossary is reflective of the the me. Carlos & Charlie s a popular and free spirited chain throughout Mexico and the Caribbean known for its unique sense of humor offers a set of comical instructi ons on how to eat a taco; complete with illustrations and funny captions. Neithe r of these two approaches would work in a fine dining atmosphere, of course. Non etheless, fine dining while appealing to a more discerning and sophisticated aud ience still should be no less committed to making their menu approachable in a b rand-relevant manner. In a fine dining execution, for example, some restaurants allow hard to pronounce imported wines be ordered by number rather than require the person ordering it to feel intimidated about the pronunciation in front of h is guests. Perhaps in the description there is also a tastefully worded mention that Burgundy is a region and not a varietal The intent isn t to dumb-down the men u but rather to make the menu more informative, approachable and to get credit f or the hard work you put in with regard to sourcing the finest ingredients and u nique culinary prowess. Zone Merchandizing The most effective way to invest marketing dollars is to start from within the r estaurant and work outward in concentric circles. We recommend that 25% 40% of a restaurant marketing budget be allocated to PR and digital marketing and the ba

lance be spent starting from within the four walls of the restaurant. Of the fou r ways to build sales (new trial, frequency, check average and party size), freq uency and check average are two of the most cost-effective to influence. A succe ssful strategy for increasing frequency and check average is zone merchandizing; using your own restaurant as a marketing channel to influence your existing cus tomers perceptions and buying behavior. To do this, identify the various zones or marketing channels within your restaur ant. This includes zones such as windows, bathrooms, greeter station, television s within the restaurant, the actual tables (for instance you may use placemats o r table tents at the table to communicate via this zone) and even the staff are a zone (what they wear and say is a channel to communicate with your customers). W ith the zones identified, you can begin planning your programming. As you have a new promotion or something important to say, rollout the message via your zones . The most effective approach to this is to use each zone to reinforce a single message rather than clutter each zone up with competing messages. For instance, you will notice when Starbucks runs a promotion through their zone merchandizing , everything (from staff buttons to bathroom posters to internal signage) all re inforce the same message. If they are promoting a summer Frapaccino, all of the zones reinforce that one item (with alternative execution within each zone to ke ep the designs and messages fresh and engaging). Adjectives versus Superlatives Regardless of where in the world you are you have likely seen World s best claimed a t a restaurant. Could be their hamburger, or their ribs, or steak; but whatever it is we all sort of roll our eyes in knowing just because they claim it doesn t m ake it so. Superlatives are bold claims that are often hard to believe when prof fered by restaurants. A far better way to write is to use true adjectives that a re believable; this will go much further in winning hearts and minds as well as building credibility. One should only use adjectives that are accurate though (truth in advertising) a nd not dress up descriptions by stuffing inaccurate adjectives in menu descripti ons, but perhaps some of these work for you: line-caught , free-range , shade-grown , etc . These types of adjectives both more accurately describe what is being served w hile also making the item sound more appealing and appetizing. Adjectives can co njure positive associations in the mind of the customer where as superlatives co njure images of snake oil salesmen. Some government agencies are working to prot ect and preserve truth in advertising and are cracking down on misleading menu c opy and descriptions. For instance, in Florida, restaurants have long gotten awa y with serving Tilapia and calling it Grouper (while they taste similar, the pri ce is quite different between the two and so some operators were buying the chea per Tilapia and selling it as the more expensive Grouper and pocketing the diffe rence). In general, the best approach to menu copywriting is to stick to unique, descriptive, accurate and appealing adjectives and avoid superlatives and false claims. Today s consumer is willing to pay a little more for a better experience at a restaurant they trust. Importance of the Source For 50 years consumers became less interested in where their food came from than they had been in the 10,000 years that preceded it. The pendulum is about to sw ing swiftly back in the direction of consumers having a real interest in where t heir food comes from. This movement which is just gearing up offers real opportu nity for independents through to multi-concept operators and regional chains and emerging brands. There are so many implications to this movement that it is imp ossible to cover all of the branches that will blossom off this one root trend, but suffice to say it is very important to consider in terms of your culinary an d menu strategy. The definitions of organic , local , and the like are still being debated and the use

of such terms will likely be regulated (again, the implications of this movement are so significant that multi-national corporations stand to lose or gain billi ons based on how this movement plays out). It is early yet, this trend, but it i s likely to be one of the most powerful forces impacting the food and restaurant industry over the next 3-10 years. Never too late to start getting involved and be one of those early adopters that is viewed as a pioneer that was active befo re the crest of Johnny-come-lately s piled on. Restaurant Customers Want to Be Educated There is now more culinary programming on television than ever before; 1000s of hours of it every week. Consumers are more curious and informed about food and a re far more likely to try something new than in the past. Anthony Bourdain s No Re servations has not only made him one of the highest paid chef s in the world but h as further incited the movement of trying something new and seeking out food wit h authenticity. If you went back 20 years ago, American s were not ready for real Me xican food. The Tex-Mex chains dominated popular culture. Today, those same Tex-Mex chains are on a spiraling decline while at the same ti me more authentic Mexican offers (such as Rosa Mexicana) are successfully expand ing and educating an appreciative audience on what is real Mexican. 20 years ago , Americans weren t interested in Mexican beyond a chimichanga and plate of cheesy n achos (neither of which are Mexican ). Today though, you are more likely to find co nsumers with a knowledge or at least a curiosity of the different regions of Mex ico and what really is authentic Mexican food than you ever would have before. A nd it s not just Mexican food it s virtually all (authentic) ethnic cuisines and tho ughtfully-inspired menu innovations. You don t have to dumb the menu down anymore. In fact, guests want to learn. Take for instance the wave of interest in Kobe b eef. When consumers learned the back-story on the beef they started a word of mo uth movement that spread across the country. There are many examples of how to a pply the principle of educating both to overall marketing and to menu engineerin g and design than what I can get to in a single blog post, but I am very convinc ed (and feel compelled to convince clients) that the idea of educating is one of t he surest ways to spark word-of-mouth buzz, generate media coverage, attract mor e qualified staff, and to fill seats in restaurants. Approachable: You Can Never Make It Too Easy to Buy from Your Restaurant While there are a few restaurants that pride themselves on appealing only to stu ffy food snobs and elitists, for the most part every restaurant can and should t ake great care to make their menu and concept in general as approachable as poss ible. As the saying goes, You can never make it too easy to buy from you . One grea t example I like to use is Californian versus French Wines. If you went back to the 1970 s and 1980 s American wine producers were mostly producing jug wine (the ch eap stuff) while the fine wines were imported from France. The fine wines were served in those stuffy food snob type restaurants and were i ntimidating for many Americans to pronounce and order. Mondavi, Jess Jackson, an d Gallo all realized that if they could make fine wine more approachable they co uld enter the high end of the market. They did and now Californian wine far outs ells French wine in the US. The same principle can be applied in many ways, espe cially as it relates to menu strategy to make items more approachable and market able. For instance, did you know that the now wildly popular Chilean Sea Bass wa s originally named the Patagonian Toothfish? No matter how sophisticated and eli te a restaurant is, it should never make guests feel intimidated and unworthy th at s exactly the opposite of what hospitality is about. A menu and concept can be made more approachable without sacrificing anything in terms of sophistication. What you stand to gain though is your own equivalent to what the Californian win e producers gained dramatically more sales by making it easier to buy. Menu Production: How many menus should we print? How many menus should you produce? Great question. It s not an exact science, but

there are some rules of thumb and planning considerations. One rule of thumb for printed menus which are reused (i.e. in vinyl slip covers, hard bound menu cove rs, etc) is to produce 1.5 times the number of seats you have (this is cutting i t close and conservative). In addition to what you need for just normal operations, consider also printing extras over the 1.5x seat count allotment for: replacing bad menus (defects, wea r/tear, etc), stolen or missing menus (maybe you did something so nice it grows legs and becomes a souvenir), and then also consider providing full menu to loca l businesses, food writers/media, and local concierges (these constituents can d eliver big group business so it doesn t pay to skimp and send them a photo copy of the menu why not give them a full hard bound menu if that s what you offer your c ustomers). In addition to those uses, also consider a less expensive version whi ch is intended to be taken away such as putting in the bag with all to-go orders , in takeout bags, deliveries, and at local events you may participate in. It is often much more economical to print/produce too many than to have to go back fo r a second-run printing or order replacements at a higher price per unit. Kill, Modify or Reposition Everyone that goes to Harvard is smart but still a top 10% and bottom 10%. Meani ng, of all the really smart kids that go to Harvard, there are still a top 10% t hat s smartest of the smart and a bottom 10% that s at the bottom of the pecking ord er. Likewise, no matter how good your menu is there will still be a top 10% that produce the sales and profits and a bottom 10% that don t carry their weight. At least twice per year, you should go through a complete menu engineering and desi gn process and weed out those bottom 10%. The simplest way to approach this process is to put all of your menu items in a 22 scatter chart (standard economic model) and identify any items showing up in t he bottom quadrants. Anything in the bottom quadrants should be Killed, Modified , or Repositioned. Some items could increase in their contribution by being rede veloped (such as adding lump crabmeat to a fish dish to increase it s price/contri bution). Some could be simply repositioned on the menu (maybe they have real pot ential to contribute sales and profits but are buried in a low-rent area of the menu; putting the item in a high-rent area of the menu could give it the needed boost). Invariably though, there are items in the bottom which just have to be d iscontinued. This can sometimes be painful internally (i.e. I love a peanut butte r and banana sandwich, I just don t understand why it s not selling ). Discontinuing a n item can be like throwing out a favorite old pair of running shoes, but such i s life the old must give way to the new to keep things fresh and vibrant. If you discontinue an item and get backlash, you can always turn this into an advantag e (check out the Coke Classic and New Coke case study to see how they did it). Menu Modifiers: When less is more There are more demands on the human attention span than ever. Prescriptions for attention deficit medicine are ballooning. Could it be that we re just being inund ated with too much to keep track of and it s not that attention is waning but that demands on it are increasing? The definition of the word restaurant is derived fr om Latin for restore . Yes, we go to restaurants to feel restored, not just fill ou r bellies. That said, some customers actually appreciate having fewer choices th an more choices. What I m getting at here are modifiers . Where instead of just list Chicken Cesar Sala d on the menu, a well-meaning chef also adds under that description options to pu t every other type of protein held in house on the same salad (i.e. or add Shrimp for $3.95 more, or add Steak for $4.95 more, or add Lobster for and on and on doi ng this systematically for each menu item). This becomes overwhelming and create s unnecessary clutter and confusion on a menu. It also creates way too many SKU s/ PLU s in the Point of Sale System and complicates training. Just because you can m ake it doesn t mean it needs to be an item listed on the menu. Another way to look

at this is to consider the menu ordering systems of both Starbucks and Chipotle . These are two of the best in the business. While the combination s of ingredient s could add up to yield millions of different unique menu items, the ordering pr ocess is set up as a very intuitive and simply process of customization. There a re four or five categories of choices but the combination s are limitless. For the typical casual dining restaurant, the average number of items should be around 55-65 (Cheesecake Factory by comparison has 200 items but the math works out sin ce they do $10.9m per location; this would be way too heavy for operators doing significantly less volume). If you add up your menu items and there is sign you have too many items to run efficiently, consider dropping the modifiers or switc hing to a different ordering system. This will help increase your through-put an d both your customers and staff will appreciate your efforts to make the menu mo re simplified and straight-forward. Menu Investment and Budgeting Guests won t try every item on the menu, but every guest uses the menu. The restau rant menu is the single most important marketing collateral you have (website is second). It s amazing how much can be spent on design and decor for new restauran ts but then the menu is often just a blip if at all identified in the new restau rant opening budget. Your menu is your best salesperson and should function as a tour guide for all of your customers. Whether you serve 5,000 customers per wee k or 5,000,000 per day there is no one talking to more of your guests than your menu. For large chains, a slight shift in menu preference scores can mean millions mor e in net profits. For regional chains, a innovative new idea incorporated into t he menu can catapult a well-loved regional player into a nationally recognized e merging brand. For high-volume independent restaurants, a professionally enginee red and designed menu can keep you head and shoulders above the local competitor s too lazy to invest in sophisticated new approaches today s competitive restauran t landscape requires. Undoubtedly, the restaurant business is one of the most co mplicated and difficult to manage. It requires so many different specialized dis ciplines to work together in harmony and there is seemingly never enough money t o go around for all of the various internal investments that are needed. That sa id, there are a few that always trump budgeting concerns. Those issues impacting the employee morale, guest experience, and certainly issues that can have quick and measurable impact on sales and profits those all go to the top of the list. Menu engineering and design is one of those issues that can address all of thos e issues collectively so when viewed in this light it is much easier to justify internally the budgets required to develop a superior new menu. Hiring a Menu Consultant All too many restaurant menus are designed and printed at the local all night co py joint. If you pay in peanuts expect to get monkeys. For the average restauran t, just a redesign of their menu incorporating some basic menu engineering techn iques can boost monthly net profits by $1,000 per million in revenue that s withou t huge price hikes and massive menu overhauls. The going rate for a competent design (that s after the analysis and engineering wor k has been done) is about $1,000 per page/panel for your menu. That s the design ave rage. What also impacts menu design budgets beyond the analysis and design work is what level your existing brand platform is established and in place. Meaning, the menu design must reflect the brand platform, not be a total departure from it. In addition there should also be budget lines for professional copywriting, printing/production, and potentially for new food photography and any new brand elements that may be introduced both to the menu and overall brand platform. For comparison sake, the lowest-priced menu engineering project we did was for $2,5 00 for a $1.2m independent and the highest was $100,000 for a $2 billion restaur ant chain this type of work is budgeted almost exclusively on the complexity of the operation being analyzed. In terms of design, we typically average $1,000 pe

r page/panel where there is an existing/established brand platform. Again, these are just to give you a feel for what specialized/experienced menu engineering a nd design consultants charge. The most talented graphic designer in the world may be able to do some amazing things design-wise, but keep in mind that effective m enu engineering and design is about more than just how the menu looks. Effective menu engineering and design requires a multi-disciplined team and takes a lot o f tedious work including the testing, analysis, design revisions, reviews and ap provals, pre-press work and print-ready files, rollout strategy/fulfillment, and more; but well-executed it can be one of the surest ways to quickly and measura bly lift sales, profits and guest satisfaction.