Building the Perfect Menu

[TAPrice]

Portfolio magazine ran a profile of "menu engineer" Gregg Rapp. He earns $200,000 a year tweaking menus:

Rapp’s engineering begins with his scouring an establishment’s financials, sales goals, and clientele. Then he identifies and highlights star menu items that are high in profit and popularity, like crab cakes and filet mignon. Burgers and other inexpensive fare are downplayed. Another of Rapp’s structuring tricks is listing prices at the end of detailed entrée descriptions rather than in a separate column. The rationale? Spelling out a dish’s elaborate ingredients lessens the likelihood of sticker shock. Also, location is everything, and expensive entrées should always appear where readers’ eyes most often tend to gravitate: the upper-right-hand side of a two-page menu. “A few years ago when meat prices were up, we put the seafood in the top right section,” says Rapp.

What other tricks do restaurants use when putting together a menu? And is there some reason that no one wants to print dollar signs next to prices?

[turkeybone]

Portfolio magazine ran a profile of "menu engineer" Gregg Rapp. He earns $200,000 a year tweaking menus:

Rapp’s engineering begins with his scouring an establishment’s financials, sales goals, and clientele. Then he identifies and highlights star menu items that are high in profit and popularity, like crab cakes and filet mignon. Burgers and other inexpensive fare are downplayed. Another of Rapp’s structuring tricks is listing prices at the end of detailed entrée descriptions rather than in a separate column. The rationale? Spelling out a dish’s elaborate ingredients lessens the likelihood of sticker shock. Also, location is everything, and expensive entrées should always appear where readers’ eyes most often tend to gravitate: the upper-right-hand side of a two-page menu. “A few years ago when meat prices were up, we put the seafood in the top right section,” says Rapp.

What other tricks do restaurants use when putting together a menu? And is there some reason that no one wants to print dollar signs next to prices?

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Well, all these tricks sound straight out of the CIA Menus class.. right down to "star" items. The high/low profit/popularity, and how to address each. It goes further about drawing the eyes for each kind of menu setup.. and when to use .95s and whatnot. Using consistent grammar is important, and yeah not just creating a price list for people to read down. You can even go and not put all the starters on one side and the entrees on the other.. people will tend to order one from each page, even if you intent is to have 3 or 4 courses.