Menu card design Strategies for Boosting Sales & Profit

One thing every restaurant cannot do without is the “hand menu”. It’s a pity, however, that many restaurants overlook the importance of hand menus, since a good hand menu directly contributes to the following:

1. Increases in sales.
2. Increases in profits.
3. Effective stock management.
4. Faster order-taking by employees and more time for performing other tasks inside the restaurant.

Just these four items alone should be enough for restaurant owners to pay attention to their hand menu design.

Recommendations on How to Design Profitable Hand Menus

Most menus we find in restaurants are menu cards or menu books with several pages of items to choose from. We recommend the following page-by-page hand menu design:

• The page next to the cover should contain the restaurant’s story and briefly describe the restaurant’s background, distinguishing characteristics and points of attraction. The content should impress every reader.
• Next to the story page should be your recommendations page. Special attention should be put on this section, because recommended menu items can make it easier for customers to decide on their meals. The recommendations page is also an effective tool for directly increasing the restaurant’s profit.
• After the recommendations page, you can list the restaurant’s menu items in categories to make it easy for customers to choose them.

10 Menu Design Recommendations for Meeting Your Sales Targets

1. The menu items on the recommendations page should be more special than other dishes whether in terms of appearance, ingredients, legendary backstory, size/amount, non-availability in other restaurants, etc., and the recommendations page should contain no more than 5-10 items to make it easier for customers to decide.

2. The menu items should be easy to maintain consistent flavors. Menu items shouldn’t be recommended simply because they are prepared by famous or award-winning chefs. Otherwise, if your chefs suddenly quit, your recommended dishes will have to be removed from the list.

3. Your recommendations should use ingredients that are available in every season and not ingredients that run out at certain parts of the year.

4. Also consider kitchen management when deciding on most of the menu items on your recommendations page. The menu items should be items that don’t take long to prepare. Otherwise, if many customers order them all at the same time, you might be unable to deliver your orders on time, and customers might complain.

5. You should average your recommendations to spread across all kitchen areas such as boiled, stir-fried, fried, grilled and Yum dishes. Because these five different kinds of food are outputted from different kitchen positions in large restaurants, you could prevent orders from piling up on a section and delaying food serving.

6. Mix between moderately-priced and expensive items to give options to customers and make it easier for them to decide.

7. Consider your profit in baht per plate, because expensive menus don’t always yield a lot of profit. For example, a menu sold for 250 baht might give a profit of 80 baht, while a 199-baht menu might give a profit of 99 baht. So, don’t get stuck in the price trap and look instead at your profit in baht.

8. You should have a picture for every recommended menu item, and it’s not necessary to present them in a neatly ordered manner. If you want to recommend a certain menu item in particular, go ahead and make its picture bigger than the rest, or even add the words “Signature Dish” or some other text to invite people to try it out.

9. You don’t have to recommend only food. You can also recommend your restaurant’s fancy beverages or special desserts.

10. Sometimes noodle, chicken and rice and single-dish restaurants have very few recommendations. Instead, they might offer “best value sets” such as Khao Mu Krob + Kiao Nao + Herbal Tea at only XXX baht. Just that’s enough to boost restaurant sales and profits.

Now that you’ve finished reading, don’t wait around. Go ahead and take a quick look at your restaurant’s menu. Have your menu items contributed to your revenue? menu card strategies contribute a great deal to what customers will order. If you do nothing, one hundred out of one hundred customers will order the same old menu items out of familiarity and lack of ideas.