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Seconds and Counting

Several years ago, Gallup reported that most customers will spend an average of 109 seconds reading a menu. This is the time limit you have to get your message to them. The time it takes to read a menu and make a decision needs to be addressed in your menu design and presentation.

Over the years, restaurants like Bennigan’s, TGI Friday’s, and The Cheesecake Factory have been known for their multipaged menus and extensive listings of menu items. If it takes longer to make a purchase decision, it will lengthen your table turnover times, especially with first-time guests. With the information on menu item sales being quickly and easily assembled through point-of-sale computers, the number of selections and pages have been greatly reduced because they found that 60 percent to 70 percent of their sales came from fewer than 18-24 menu items. It did not make sense to have 50-100 different choices. Not only did they shorten the order-taking time, they reduced inventory and purchases.

Considering the importance of the menu sales mix in the smooth and efficient operation of the restaurant, it behooves all restaurant operators to learn the various techniques of menu design so they can be incorporated into their next menu design. A properly designed menu can direct the attention of the diner to specific items and increase the likelihood that those items will be ordered. These items should be the ones with the highest gross profit, lowest food costs and help achieve the average check needed to return the desired sales. In addition, degree of preparation difficulty should be factored into your menu evaluation. If an item cannot be prepared in 10-12 minutes or it requires multiple steps and needs to be moved between more than two stations or employees before it gets to the pickup window, it may not be one of the items you want to prominently display on your menu. This being said, while menu design and placement of items on the menu can influence the customers’ decision, it will not influence customers to purchase items that they do not want. Menu design can help increase the odds of an item’s selection.

Think how much easier it would be to forecast use levels of perishable ingredients, production quantities, and scheduling help when you can forecast to within 1 percent to 3 percent of what you will be selling during any given meal period. If you can predict the number of customers that will enter your restaurant, you can quantify your needs for inventory, production and staffing.


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 874


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