The 109 Rule: Is Your Menu Doing Its Job?
By Stephen Millar | pizzanews.com.au

Yes, research tells us that your customers average 109 seconds to read a menu, so if you are to get your point across to your customers you need one that has been thought out and well designed. High margin returns to you establishment need to stand out.

To achieve a well engineered menu you need to set some goals for it. In saying that, you need to “cost ALL your items on your top 10 sellers on you menu as of today. Be ruthless and cull any item that doesn’t meet your profitable margin targets.”

Businesses that are experiencing slow down through these regressed economics times need to address all areas of their businesses as an important areas and one of the most important is the restaurant’s/pizzeria’s menu.

Menus need to be crafted with the same precision as anything else that creates the customer experience in your shop. Often too little thought is given to the planning of the menu. It more often knocked together with little or no thought. Most often overlooked are:

• Costing of the items on the menu.

• Position of the items on the menu, for maximum return.

• Quality of the menu stock (paper).

• Working out the most popular choices on the menu and costing accordingly. Dropping the slow movers from the menu.

• Overcrowding of the items on the menu (i.e.; too many choices creating clutter for the customer).

• Lack of imagination (i.e.; pictures or creative descriptions of items on the menu).

These points, if addressed with a planning stage and a goal to increase your sales, will certainly open up your mind to looking at you menu in a new light. Also, it could answer a few questions on why you are working more and becoming the “Busy Fool”, running around and not achieving a lot.

The ME – N – U (me and you) should be the bridge between you and you customer making them wanting to cross it to see what you have on offer.

So many pizza stores forget about why they are in business; to make money and be profitable. It is important that a team meeting be called to allow comments and awareness when a new menu is being designed and structured to be more profitable. This will address a few of points. Pizzerias that are too busy to cost their menu are businesses that I have found who don’t know their food percentages.

Accuracy counts. Costing a menu with team members will:

1. Create awareness of the costs (food costs) of those items on the menu.

2. Team members will see how those items are rallied and placed on the menu to provide a more profitable return to the establishment.

3. Teach team members how placement on the menu gives a maximum return to profit and how it corrals the customer into the high return, fast mover items on the menu.

4. Show them why you limit the number choices and experiment with items by rotating those items to create a fresh menu every 90 days, (i.e.; introduce some new products and drop the slow movers off). Rotating menus helps create repeat business.

5. Create awareness of excessive stock that is taking space in fridges or on shelves from items that are slow movers. That money is better in your bank than sitting around and it assists in having a more profitable cash flow and expansion of your business.

Let’s talk about how to design the menu. Use a lot of white space on the menu. Don’t try to create a story out of it. So many restaurants/ pizzerias try to cram as much as possible into their menu and it finishes up losing the customer. Diagrams and pictures that have borders around them will draw the eyes to that item, which would be a way of getting the customers to choose the high return margin items. Use a 12 point font on the menu and limit the bolding of the headlines of categories and use ten words or less.

Creative flare…this describes the items on the menu with exact and to the point descriptions of those items. Certain words that have appeal to the customer are words like: marinated, roasted or cooked in our wood fired oven.

Words that have a negative effect and can turn the customer off, such as “fried”, can be substituted with words like “hand-battered”. Don’t use dollar signs ($) on the menu and use the same font as the description of the menu item. Keep away from using columns to draw the eye the price of such items. This will stop the price shopper. Place the price immediately after the description of the menu item. And use the same font too.

Look at the quality of the menu stock paper that you will be using. I would suggest nothing less than what the major fast food chains use to build their brand. Think about the size, weight and layout of the menu.

Don’t get carried away with a sexy good looking menu that is impressive to look at but the message on the paper is being missed. Hold focus groups to see what the staff and think and tell them to give truthful answers of the menu. Get input from your customers.

Use posters that are eye-catching. Continue with your branding and get posters made up to assist your message and branding of your pizzeria. With well-designed menus you can carry the message over to your window displays. One word about this type of branding is to use suction cups on your window to support the posters and not tacky old blue tack or sticky tape. After all, you have designed a great product to sell your products and the poster on display to the walk and drive by traffic will help bring that customer through the door. Posters for the windows aren’t cheap items because of the limited number run, but they are well worth it.

The Pizza Consultants have done some heavy research into this area and have nailed some very competitive printing quotes for the menus and posters. If you need to know more then don’t hesitate to call us at 0413 902 391 or email pizzaconsultant@y7mail.com.