 |
What They Won't tell You About Menus
Peter Greenberg August 16, 2007PAGES: 1 2
Article Controls
pony up more
Next time you go out to eat and the waiter brings you a menu, take a deep breath. Open it up. Turn it over. Start on the left side first, then go immediately to the back of the menu. Read the right side of the menu last. Why? Read on….a little knowledge makes for a nice appetizer.
Let’s start with some statistics: Americans are eating out more than ever, and they’re spending more than ever before. Consider this: the nation’s 935,000 restaurants should hit $537 billion in sales this year. This means that the average American adult will spend nearly 48 per cent of his or her food budget in restaurants.
Some American cities are positively addicted to eating out. Houstonians eat out more than four times a week. So do folks in Atlanta. And they spend money. The average per person restaurant tab in New York City, the highest in the U.S., is nearly $40. But hold onto your wallets: in Tokyo and London, it jumps to more than $70 per person. And that doesn’t include wine. (More on that later)
Ok, so much for statistics. Now for the surprise.
One of the reasons the tabs are going up is because of something you probably don’t realize. Then again, you’re not supposed to realize it: the secret science of menu psychology. Smart chefs (or their menu consultants) know that when most of you open a menu, your eyes go right to the top of the page on the right side. And, armed with that knowledge, chefs place the menu item that will give them the most profit at the top of the page. Hence, it soon becomes their biggest seller. Then, your eyes normally drift to the center of the page. That’s where many chefs place their absolutely most expensive item. They do that not because they expect you to buy that item, but because the psychology of menus indicates you’ll probably then look at the items immediately above and below the high ticket item and order one of those. Again, those two items rank second and third for generating profits.
I’ve tested this in a dozen different restaurants – and then asked the chefs about their menus. Sure enough, they’ve admitted the practice. “Millions of dollars have been spent to understand what makes a profitable menu,” one chef told me. “By rearranging the order and relaying it out, it can mean tens of thousands of dollars of additional revenue. It has to do with everything from wording or naming, length of description, the number of columns, visuals of icons and pictures, price points, and not using dollar signs.”
At one popular Miami restaurant, the chef actually annotated the menu for me. At the center of the page; caviar at $202 per ounce. Immediately above and below it were tuna tartar at $26 and tiger shrimp at $24. On the top right side of the menu, the most profitable item; wild king salmon.
One microbrewery redesigned its menu with this kind of psychology. On the old menu: hamburgers and sandwiches. They decided they wanted to sell higher priced items. So the menu was reformatted to place more expensive items on the inside right page, toward the middle, in bigger type. The burgers and sandwiches went to the back page in smaller type Within a week, I’m told, the average check went from $16 to $21.
The number of items on the menu is also part of the finesse. Fast food has 14-25 items on the menu. Casual dining, like the Cheesecake Factory, has upwards of 200 items on the menu, broken down by category. (However, a chain like Bennigan’s has more revenue from its bar than the Olive Garden, so it puts less emphasis on its menu)
PAGES: 1 2
