I suggest you quickly read through my earlier blog posts on menu writing first:
Initial thoughts on designing your menu
Menu writing part one (online presence)
Menu writing part two (Know your numbers)
Checklist of top tips for menu writing:
- Remove money signs
- Don’t have more than seven choices in each section
- Don’t line up the prices for easy comparison
- Don’t have just a list of ingredients
- Don’t write a menu without speaking with the person who made the dish
- Focus on your USPs
- Make sure the language used is on brand
- If you are tight for space, leave off common items eg soda, water
- Too few items is preferable to too many
Ask an outsider
When you are finished, show it to someone unconnected with the restaurant to see what they think.
Ask them:
- Is it easy to understand?
- Does it make you hungry?
- Is it overwritten (flowery language), or just right?
- Does it tell you too much or too little about the dishes?
- What can you tell about the restaurant from this menu?
- Is there any information not there that you would like?
Next step: optimising the menu
When you have written the menu, you know what’s next? After a few months, I’m going to want to optimise it. I’ll want your sales figures and menu costs. I’ll need to put things in boxes and move things around, so you make more money. But that’s for another day.
Menu optimisation
I’ve written quite a bit on the menu optimisation work I do. Here’s an example menu optimisation.
Get in touch
If anything has piqued your interest, just shoot me an email. Address top right on every page.