Your restaurant’s menu is its most important sales tool, which is why menu optimization is critical to running a thriving restaurant. Download our free menu optimization checklist to find out how to create a menu that boosts profits.
Want to learn more first? Keep reading for a preview of what you’ll learn from our menu checklist.
What Is Menu Optimization?
Menu optimization means pricing, designing, and engineering your restaurant’s menu in a way that helps increase revenue and drive more sales of your most profitable menu items. It’s all about having an intentional menu strategy, rather than simply listing dishes anywhere on the menu and pricing them without much thought.
The Three Principles of Restaurant Menu Optimization
Pricing, design, and engineering are the three principles of menu optimization. By getting these right, you can ensure you’re not leaving any money on the table.
1. Menu Pricing
Menu pricing begins with knowing your cost of goods sold (COGS). When you receive inventory, enter its cost into your point of sale (POS) system or inventory management system. Then, let these systems work their magic and calculate how much each serving costs your restaurant to make.
After you know your COGS, you also have to consider your target profit margin, pricing psychology, and competitors’ prices.
Let’s say you run an upscale restaurant and want to price a pasta entree. You calculate your COGS per serving as $4.50. To achieve your desired 66% profit margin, you’ll need to charge $13.50 for the dish. However, when you look at other upscale restaurants in your area, you notice that their pasta dishes start at $30, so you decide to price your dish at $34 to signal high quality.
2. Menu Design
The next principle of menu optimization is design. First, you must decide who will be designing the menu: a professional graphic designer or someone from your team. Then, you need to make sure your menu fits in with your branding. Use fonts and colors that match your logo, website, and interior design for a consistent look and feel.
Want more menu design tips? You’ll have to download our free checklist to get them.
3. Menu Engineering
Menu engineering takes menu design up a notch. It’s all about laying your menu out in a way that gets customers to notice and order the most profitable drinks and dishes. It also involves developing a menu strategy to cut out not-so-profitable items and let dishes that are both popular and profitable shine.
Our restaurant menu optimization checklist gives you the scoop on all the things you need to consider when it comes to engineering.
What You’ll Find in Our Menu Optimization Checklist
This free, downloadable checklist has a section on each of the three menu optimization principles: pricing, design, and engineering. Each section comes with a list of things to do, consider, and check when creating your menu. This checklist also includes space for you to take notes about your own menu.
Whether you’re opening a restaurant or revamping its menu for the season, you have a lot on your mind and on your plate. Our menu checklist can help you employ best practices without letting anything slip through the cracks. Download our free menu optimization checklist today.