A restaurant’s menu design is more than just a random and disordered list of dishes. It has probably been tailored at the hands of a menu designer to make it easy-to-read, attractive but, most important, profitable. Furthermore, the menu is the only piece of printed advertising that will for certain be read by the customer.
These are the most common and useful practices restaurant marketing and menu design experts use to create easy-to-read, attractive and profitable restaurant menus.
A well-known restaurant marketing technique is the use of colors. Colors affect our perception and how we feel about it. Green implies freshness, orange makes us feel more hungry, yellow is seen as a happy color and red is the one used to persuade customers to buy those dishes with the highest profit margins.
A good example of color utilization is Tender Greens, a fine casual restaurant located at 2071 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704. They use the color green as a way to convey freshness and healthy food, which is their main concept. Check out their website for more examples of colors utilization. (www.tendergreens.com).
Covert Currency
The hardest part of a meal comes at the end of it: when it’s time to pay the bill. By taking out the dollar sign, it’s possible to take the emphasis away from the cost of the items that people order.
Psychological Prices
Every restaurant marketing expert would say that the use of round numbers is perceived as fancy and sophisticated whereas the use of .95 makes us feel like we are getting a great deal. Depending on type of business, décor, location, it is interesting to choose the one that best fits the restaurant concept.
Adjectives and Descriptions
The more information a restaurant offers about its dishes, the better. Customers feel like they are receiving more from the restaurant and it makes them be more willing to pay more for that dish. Moreover, the use of words such as “Italian”, “imported” or “homemade” are a good restaurant marketing technique likely to convey quality and originality to the customer.
A good example is Tomy’s Pizza, located at 1570 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA 94133 (tonyspizzanapoletana.com). They use words such as “imported”, “Italian” and “homemade” in their menu to make it look authentic and original.
Expensive Decoys
It’s all about perspective. Every restaurant marketing expert would say that one of the most common restaurant marketing practices is to include a ridiculously expensive item at the very top of the menu to make the rest of the menu look reasonably priced.
Limited Options
There’s a golden rule when it comes to restaurant consulting: the more options a customer has, the more anxiety they feel. That leads to confusion and a negative experience.
The Wolf, an outstanding restaurant located at 3853 Piedmont Ave, Oakland, CA 9461, develops this restaurant marketing technique pretty well by only offering between 15 and 18 dishes for both lunch and dinner. With a limited selection, it helps customers decide when it comes to ordering. Check out their menu here: www.thewolfoakland.com
Wondering how well your restaurant business is doing? Looking for ways to improve your restaurant branding and menu design?
Contact us today to schedule a free consulting session to review how we may be able to help. Piedmont Avenue Consulting is a San Francisco Bay Area based business development and marketing consulting firm who creates brand awareness, strengthens customer loyalty, and increases lead generation through leveraging new technologies and streamlining business processes. (www.piedmontave.com)
