Tips on Menu Efficiency

 

First impressions highlight every successful sale. With all the nomenclature associated with the restaurant business, the title of salesman doesn't fit in a restaurants line-up, but in reality it is what we do. We are all simply selling food, beverage and enjoyment. Like every other salesman, on the road, we each need tools to describe our product and help us define our pitch to close the deal. Hence the menu.

Why then, do so many menus – those tools of our trade – look as though they are historical documents found at the dump. How do weather-beaten, dirty, crinkled, crumpled, cut, torn, and the worst of all, food-spattered menus with small particulars from sloppy Joey and his little brother Billy’s spittle continue to make it to the table?

Are we so blind by our titles that we loose focus of the table? Are we hiring such inefficient prospects of the stage and screen they cannot differentiate between clean and shouldn’t be seen? Bring that up at the next shift meeting. In the meantime, here are ten tips on menu efficiency.

1) Keep it simple. Nobody has ever left a restaurant because the menu wasn’t complicated.

 

2) Write it in English, even if you think you are the greatest French restaurant in Apple Valley, Wisconsin .

 

3) If you can design your menu so that it can be frequently printed at Kinko’s or on your office printer, that is even better.

 

4) Don’t feature something that is coming next week. It doesn’t help in selling customers on that day’s selection.

 

5) Make sure your servers know the items on the menu. This is especially important if you change items frequently.

 

6) Thomas Keller presents a wonderful menu at Bouchon in Yountville, California . A folded, wrapped piece of simple artwork, similar to parchment paper, embraces the folded linen napkin on the plate. Classy, alleviating the wait for host to find or server to bring.

 

7) Review the menus daily before each shift and make sure they are clean. Toss the bad ones.

 

8) Menu covers are a solution. They must be wiped down regularly. Don’t use window cleaner. It will discolor the plastic on the cover. It will also carry an awful smell to the table, leaving the customer with a bad taste in their mouths.

 

9) Make sure the name, address and phone number of your restaurant is on your menu.

 

10) If you are going to feature your chef, managers and other employees on your menu, don’t print too many.

 

 

For more foodservice insight, please visit John Foley’s blog at www.allbusiness.com.

 

 

 

John Foley woke up one day and found himself in the restaurant business. It was mere happenstance that while working for a local paper in St. Paul, Minnesota , he wrote a story about the city's 100-year-old grocery store. After reading the story, the owner of the market decided Foley had more passion for his business than he did so he sold it to him. The transplanted New Yorker found himself in the grocery business without any knowledge or experience. To make matters worse, he convinced his girlfriend at the time to give up her six figure executive job and join him in the business. It isn't often that an entrepreneur can turn a mistake into a profitable venture. But with the help of his partner, who eventually became his wife, Kranston and Foley did just that.

 

With over a decade of experience as a restaurant designer, owner and operator, Foley views the business as nobody else does – as a social addiction. For over ten years Foley worked in his restaurants, grew the company and learned every aspect, from hands-on experience of the business.

 

Foley's insight to the problems, the solutions, the constant concern for perfection, and the feeling that everyone else is running a more successful restaurant, not only brings a smile to the reader's face, but also offers tips and advice on how to overcome the daily stress of the business.

 

Today, Foley owns an Internet site, works as a culinary consultant, a public speaker and has recently completed a manuscript about his decade-long experiences. In his dining decade, Foley learned the business from the bottom-up, worked every position in the restaurant (at least once), mastering the tricks, techniques, and secrets of growing a single-unit company with 20 seats into a multi-unit group with a total of 590 seats, including a classic sixty-foot catering boat in two states.

 

Currently Foley continues to associate with many restaurateurs but has overcome the constant urge to call the numbers on the numerous "Restaurant For Lease" signs he passes