The Art of the Menu ..


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      Frank Picchione
      Owner & Operator    

    You walk into a restaurant, sit down and pick up the menu. And, whether you realize it, that piece of laminated cardboard or leather-bound collection of parchment already is doing its job.

    It may have been the reason you walked into that particular restaurant in the first place. It may be prompting you to select a particular dish the restaurateur wants you to select. It's conveying to you, subtly and almost subliminally, the memory you'll have of your dining experience.

    And, it might even make you spend a bit more for your meal than you'd planned to.

    It's a pretty good day's work, really, for an item most diners would consider a utilitarian, albeit sometimes fancy, book of gastronomic lists.

    A menu actually is "a very important marketing tool," says Theresa LeClerc, marketing assistant for Big Dog's Hospitality Group, which currently operates six Las Vegas-area restaurants. A menu is "the first thing people see and study," she notes, "so (a menu must) make a good first impression."

    A menu serves, first, as a sort of miniature billboard for a restaurant. That function is particularly significant at restaurants that post menus outside in an effort to turn idle passers-by into actual customers.

    "You want to appeal to as many potential customers as possible, and when I say `potential,' the first key is to get the customer in the door," explains Frank Rigley, vice president of food and beverage at Bally's. A menu, he adds, often is key to that go/no-go decision.

    Once you're inside the door, the menu's job is to capture "the whole feeling of the place, whether it's casual or elegant," says Van Heffner, president of the Nevada Restaurant Association. "The menu tells a story. It's like the passport to your dinner."

    So, in designing a menu, says Steve Arcana, corporate food and beverage director for Station Casinos Inc., "we look at the theme of the restaurant -- what type of feel are you trying to give?"

    The trick then becomes conveying that theme -- that feel -- in a two-dimensional way through artwork, typefaces, colors and prose.

    "There are some certain expectations you have of various menus," Arcana says. "An Italian menu would probably have more red or green print or traditional, Italian-style (art). For a steakhouse, you're going to have, perhaps, a leather-bound menu and bolder printing, because steakhouses are big and masculine and bold."

    Menus for Mexican restaurants tend to be longer than other menus because "there's a tremendous amount of items that are necessary to have on a Mexican menu," Arcana says. "And, you'll see a Mexican menu broken up with different Mexican-style print and Mexican-style borders."

    Despite any culinary commonalities, a good menu will be unique to the restaurant it serves. LeClerc says that, while menus at all Big Dog's Hospitality Group properties share common elements, each contains minor variations that help convey each restaurant's identity.

    For instance, at Big Dog's Cafe & Casino, she says, "we carry out the (canine) theme with bone-shaped headings for appetizers and little comments -- `Doggone good' -- just to keep it fun and light and happy and comfortable."

    However, such canine elements obviously aren't suitable at Holy Cow! Casino, Cafe and Brewery, or even the Wisconsin-themed Draft House Barn & Casino, two other Big Dog's Hospitality Group outlets.

    The same holds true at more upscale restaurants. Al Dente, the Italian room at Bally's, was designed to have "a bright, cheerful, contemporary, upbeat atmosphere, and we needed to reflect that in the menu," Rigley says. "So, on the menu cover, we've got sharp, bright colors. The design is very modern, very contemporary."

    In fact, the al Dente menu cover features an overt link to the room's design -- a computer-enhanced image of a stained-glass panel in the restaurant. Similarly, Rigley says, the cover of Bally's Steakhouse menu features an image of a copper medallion based on the real medallions situated throughout the restaurant.

    Dan Lankford, vice president of sales for Kenyon Press Inc., a Hawthorne, Calif.-based menu design firm, says that, in creating a menu for a new restaurant, his company examines everything from carpet swatches to the lighting fixtures a restaurant will have in an effort to "get a feel of what they want to do with the restaurant."

    Kenyon Press has worked for a number of hotel properties, too, Lankford says, and, in those cases, "I even go and check into a hotel to get a general feel of the hotel and what you want me to feel when I check into your hotel."

    Practicality is also important. Because coffee-shop menus receive so much use and abuse, Arcana says, they're typically fashioned "in laminated form or in a holder -- like a booklet that lets you slide pages in and out."

    And, LeClerc says, "the color of the paper is important. We do (Big Dog's menus) on white, because we are a bar-restaurant sort of setting and (inside lighting is) a little dimmer. It's easier to read."

    Designing menus is a science as well as an art. Lankford says there's actually been "a lot of research" done to figure out, for instance, "exactly where your eye goes to first" when opening a menu.

    "Nine times out of 10," he notes, "a person's eye is going to go to the upper right corner, then follow a (specific) pattern."

    Arcana says that he usually will put to the middle-right side of a menu page "any item I'd like to sell more than something else -- an item I'd like to make a highlighted item," because "that's the most natural place for the eye to go."

    Menus usually list categories of dishes "in the order the customer would order, because customers would eat an appetizer before the main course," Rigley says. "It's like writing a book -- the conclusion would come only at the end of the book, so dessert comes at the end of the menu."

    Arcana generally favors listing the items within each menu category from least complex to most complex. "For instance, if you deal with the breakfast section, you do all of your egg items -- all of your steak and eggs, and ham and eggs, and bacon and eggs -- then work in some more complicated stuff, like eggs Benedict. Then you might do skillets, huevos rancheros or a lox platter."

    Rigley says it's generally best to "start off a section with a lower-priced item," so that a diner does not suffer sticker shock that might force him to skip the entire menu section and move on to the next one.

    "It's important to get the customer's attention to the entire menu," he explains. "And, with the prices, I believe it's important to list the item, then the description and then the price. And the fonts that you use shouldn't highlight the price or give more attention to the price than to the item."

    Lankford says some restaurants list a dish's price in the body of its description, rather than letting the price stand alone to the right of the page. Diners still may price-shop among the items, he explains, "but what we've done is force your eye to look at the description first. And, hopefully, by the time you've read the description you'll say, `What the heck, what's another dollar or two?' because we've sold you on the description before the price."

    In writing descriptions of dishes, "you want to clearly describe your items, but you don't want to lose the attention of the customer," Rigley says. "If you write a book, chances are customers are not going to have time to read the menu."

    Approaches do differ, Arcana says, and "different people have different philosophies. But I think there's definitely got to be some creativity in whatever you do."

    In June, many of Nevada's best restaurants entered their menus in a design competition sponsored by the Nevada Restaurant Association and Kenyon Press. It was the first such event held here and Lankford says about 100 Nevada restaurants participated.

    The quality of entries "really exceeded our expectations," he adds. "You have such a wide range of variety in Las Vegas, it's tremendous."

    Most diners probably don't realize -- and may not even appreciate -- the thought, effort and money that goes into creating the basic restaurant menu.

    "But you know what? I don't think it really matters," Rigley says. "We put the effort into designing a menu to sell the restaurant and to project the identity of the restaurant, not to get recognition for the effort. So if we've captured the customer and make them happy, then we've achieved our objective."

Summary

    We hope it was a good read for you; to those that are just starting a restaurant, a sort of Menu 101 and to others reinforce your existing beliefs that the establishment menu is the primary tool of your business and it should not be any different online.

Designing Menus That Sell
Restaurants USA Magazine, May 1998

    A key component of any restaurant's marketing plan is a well-designed menu that solidifies the operation's overall concept while promoting profitable items. Industry experts offer tips for turning your menu into an indispensable sales tool.

    There are many factors that could bring customers to your restaurant. A strong reputation may pique their curiosity. An advertised promotion may spur them to visit. A striking exterior may grab their attention. Or the scents from the kitchen might draw them from down the block. But even with all of the marketing opportunities there are to persuade a customer to try your restaurant, once customers have come to you, the most concise outline of your marketing plan is the menu.

    "There are only four tools inside the walls of your restaurant to build your business. The menu is the No. 1 tool," says Tom Feltenstein, CEO of Feltenstein Partners located in Palm Beach, Florida. The menu comes before employees, before point-of-purchase promotions and before data capture (getting the names, birthdays and addresses of every person who walks through the door). "Of all those tools, menus are the place to begin. Menus are the purest form of your restaurant's strategic marketing plan," says Feltenstein.

    "An effectively designed menu will entice guests to buy the items you want," he says. You achieve that by strategically engineering the menu's layout, design, graphics, format and price points to stimulate selection of highly profitable items. The most powerful menus are those that successfully, but subtly, weave those important factors into a pleasing presentation that can drive home your restaurant's message in just minutes.

Pricing for power

    Although customers spend only a brief time with a menu, it's important to recognize how menus drive profit and cash flow by guiding the guests to what to select, not just showing them what selections you have, says Feltenstein. Careful pricing is a vital step to marketing with full force, so be sure to cost out your recipes and don't just put random prices or the same prices as your competition on the menu, he says. Carefully go through the recipes and cost out all the ingredients to reach accurate prices.

    Finally, while the mechanics of spelling and word choice need to be considered, the artistry of the description can't be ignored . Items need to be described so they sound physically attractive, says Polonsky. An experienced copywriter is essential for writing a description that is creative, accurate and attractive, he says.

The importance of image

    Even if every detail is attended to, the menu's place in the overall scheme of the restaurant cannot be overlooked. "Presentation on the plate is important; the presentation on the menu should be just as important it shows the concept, it sets the mood essentially it sets the table," says Polonsky.

    For fine-dining restaurants, the importance of the menu's image goes beyond an artistic presentation to validating the restaurant's expertise and authority. "The menu has to be able to command the price of the food," says Dickson.

    Once the server has walked away with the menu, something that bears the name of your restaurant should remain on the table, says Polonsky. "A nice clean look is good for your image, but the repetition of a theme also reinforces the name of the restaurant into the customer's memory." If you're going to have matchbooks at the bar, take the extra step of having your name put on them, he suggests. The same is true for coasters, beverage napkins or table tents.

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Maximize Menu Merchandising Power
Restaurants USA Magazine, May 1997

    Menu designs vary as much as the restaurants they serve. The chic downtown bistro spotlights its signature espressos and cappuccinos on a large single sheet punctuated by bold graphics and garnished with copper-foil trim. The family-style restaurant showcases its value-priced dinner entrees on a laminated trifold menu sprinkled with mouth-watering food photography. The popular theme restaurant highlights its specialty burgers and sandwiches on a die-cut, hand-lettered menu.

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