Food safety regulations: Tips & Tricks for Building a Profitable Restaurant Menu
A restaurant’s menu is more than just a list of food items—it’s one of the most critical sales tools. Studies show that the average customer spends only 109 seconds glancing at a menu before deciding what to order. That’s less than two minutes for your menu to make an impact! During this brief moment, customers scan and compare prices and read descriptions.
To make the most of those 109 seconds, crafting a concise, well-organized, and profit-driven menu is essential. Every dish and drink should not only delight your guests but also contribute to your restaurant’s bottom line. This is where menu engineering comes into play—a strategic approach to designing menus that boost profitability while guiding customer choices.
In this blog, we’ll dive into practical tips and tricks for building a profitable menu that works for both sit-down dining and delivery, all while keeping your customers’ experience at the forefront.
What is Menu Engineering?
Menu engineering is a strategic process used to evaluate and optimize a restaurant’s menu by analyzing food costs, sales data, and customer preferences. The goal is to categorize menu items based on their profitability and popularity, guiding restaurant owners to make informed decisions about which items to feature, reprice, or remove. This involves analyzing each dish’s food cost per serving, contribution margin, and sales volume, creating a balance between profit and customer satisfaction.
What’s the Purpose of Menu Engineering?
The main goal of menu engineering is to maximize profitability by using data to optimize the menu. Restaurateurs can strategically highlight high-margin and popular dishes, adjust pricing, and streamline offerings to influence customer decisions. With a firm grasp on food costs and customer behavior, menu engineering can boost revenue while improving the dining experience.
What are the Benefits of Menu Engineering?
Maximize Profitability
Menu engineering identifies high-margin items and promotes them through strategic placement and compelling descriptions. This increases the likelihood that customers will choose profitable dishes, maximizing revenue per transaction.
Cost Management
By understanding the cost of each dish, restaurants can pinpoint items with low profit margins and adjust pricing or recipes to improve profitability. This helps maintain a healthy gross profit margin even as food costs fluctuate.
Improved Customer Experience
Streamlining the menu helps customers make quicker, more satisfying decisions. By showcasing popular and well-liked dishes, restaurants can reduce menu confusion and increase customer satisfaction.
Reduction of Food Waste
With a refined menu, restaurants can manage ingredients more efficiently, reducing the amount of unsold food. This not only cuts waste but also lowers food costs.
Innovation
Menu engineering encourages regular updates to the menu based on performance data, which leads to more opportunities for experimentation. Restaurants can introduce seasonal or innovative dishes while keeping their offerings fresh and exciting.
Drawbacks to Menu Engineering
Although menu engineering has many advantages, it’s not without challenges. Overemphasizing profitability can lead to reduced menu variety or compromise on quality, which could hurt customer satisfaction. Additionally, frequent menu changes may confuse regular diners. Striking the right balance between profitability and variety while maintaining customer trust is essential.
How to Engineer a Menu and Maximize Profits
Here’s a step-by-step guide to engineering a menu effectively:
- Choose a Time Period: Decide on the time frame for your analysis. Seasonal menus should align with seasonal changes, while more stable menus can be reviewed less frequently. Regular updates are essential to keep pace with fluctuating food costs.
- Cost Your Menu: Calculate food cost per serving and contribution margin for each menu item. Use these formulas:
- Food Cost per Serving: Total cost of ingredients per serving.
- Contribution Margin: Sales price – Food cost per serving.
- For instance, if a hamburger costs $3.65 to make and sells for $14.40, its contribution margin is $10.75.
- Categorize Menu Items Based on Profit and Popularity: Use a menu matrix to categorize items into:
- Plowhorses: Popular but low-profit items. Improve profitability by adjusting prices or portion sizes.
- Stars: High-profit and high-popularity items. Promote and feature prominently.
- Puzzles: High-profit but low-popularity items. Experiment with promotions or adjustments to increase appeal.
- Duds: Low-profit and low-popularity items. Consider removing or reworking them.
- Redesign Your Menu: Use the insights from your menu matrix to craft a new menu layout. Incorporate both quantitative data and qualitative feedback from staff and customers to make informed decisions.
What is Menu Psychology?
Menu psychology studies how customers interact with menus and how menu design can guide their choices. Elements such as layout, colors, pricing, and even the way items are described can influence a customer’s decision to order specific dishes, potentially increasing sales of high-profit items.
Why Should Restaurants Leverage Menu Psychology?
Choose the Ideal Menu Configuration
Menu layout plays a crucial role in guiding customer choices. A two-panel menu is often the most effective, giving customers a sense of choice without overwhelming them. For larger menus, a three-panel design may be necessary, but simplicity often leads to better results.
Write Awesome Menu Descriptions
A well-written description can increase sales by up to 27%. Focus on vivid language, highlighting the origin, preparation, and texture of dishes without being verbose. A compelling story behind each dish enhances its appeal.
Emphasize Your Stars and Puzzles
Use eye magnets—like bold fonts, icons, or splashes of color—sparingly to spotlight your most profitable menu items. Overuse can dilute the impact, but a single graphic element per page can boost sales by up to 30%. Keep it simple to make sure your stars and puzzles shine.
Consider Eye Movement Patterns
Customers tend to focus on specific areas of a menu. Placing high-profit items in those key areas, such as the top right corner, can drive higher sales.
Beware of the Burden of Choice
Offering too many options can overwhelm customers. Keep your menu concise, and consider splitting large menus by meal type or daypart (breakfast, lunch, dinner) to streamline decision-making.
Train Your Staff
Train your staff to guide customers toward ordering high-profit items by making suggestions and highlighting daily specials. Servers are often the final influence on customer choices, so training them on your menu engineering goals is essential.
Measure Your New Menu’s Impact
After a month of your new menu being live, dive into your sales data to gauge its impact. Check if sales of high-margin items like puzzles and stars increased and if profits improved. Evaluate if food costs decreased and identify any trends. Based on these insights, adjust and refine your menu further. Remember, menu optimization is an ongoing process—track results meticulously to understand what resonates with your customers and continue evolving for better performance.
The Science Behind a Profitable Menu
Menu engineering is both an art and a science. By selecting a timeframe, calculating costs, categorizing dishes, redesigning the layout, and measuring impact, you can create a menu that not only satisfies customers but also boosts profitability.
With over 35 years of experience in food handling, safety, and management, AAA Food Handler is dedicated to supporting restaurants in creating successful, profitable menus. For expert advice and cutting-edge solutions, reach out to us and let’s transform your menu into a revenue-generating machine.
Ready to optimize your menu? Contact us at AAA Food Handler for expert guidance and solutions tailored to your restaurant’s needs.
FOOD
HANDLER
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Food Handler Reviews
4.9
Exelente examen
Preguntas muy puntuales en el Examen. Me gusta como explica Maria Todo Bien detallado
No Title
Certificado de manipulación de alimentos
Muy bien
Basico
Yo se hacer algunas cosas, pero ya se mucho de lo que tiene. Parecia bastante basico. Pero aprendi las temperaturas y los tiempos.
Nice course
Fast, interesting and educational
Love it
It was fun and interesting!
Food contamination
Overall it was really helpful each module had good information about hygiene and food contamination I gained a lot of knowledge about it
Mayra Lopez
Overall it was really helpful each module had really good information I learned a lot about hygiene and about food contamination
Observaciones
Muchas gracias! Por sus concomitants, me seven mucho…
Is god have it in spanish
Thank you for heaving this curse in spanish, is more easy to understand in my mother tong, but overall it is a very intuitive, easy and comprensive curse!
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No Title
Una puebra increible y de muy grande ayuda
Fue algo muy importante y de gran aprendizaje para mi, al aprender todo lo necesario para dar un buen servicio, sin duda estoy muy agradecido por la guia de estudio, esoy listo para dar un excelente servicio
IM SOO HAAPY
I AM VERY HAPPY TO HAVE LEARNED
muy buen curso
tome este curso para mi daycare y me gusto mucho.
No Title
No Title
Nadia ALVARENGA
Bad
Horrible
No funcionó bien 🙄🙄 además no es para trabajadores de Sanitazion además la aplicación es mala no se escucha los audios
na
na
Food Handler Reviews
4.9
Exelente examen
Preguntas muy puntuales en el Examen. Me gusta como explica Maria Todo Bien detallado
No Title
Certificado de manipulación de alimentos
Muy bien
Basico
Yo se hacer algunas cosas, pero ya se mucho de lo que tiene. Parecia bastante basico. Pero aprendi las temperaturas y los tiempos.
Nice course
Fast, interesting and educational
Love it
It was fun and interesting!
Food contamination
Overall it was really helpful each module had good information about hygiene and food contamination I gained a lot of knowledge about it
Mayra Lopez
Overall it was really helpful each module had really good information I learned a lot about hygiene and about food contamination
Observaciones
Muchas gracias! Por sus concomitants, me seven mucho…
Is god have it in spanish
Thank you for heaving this curse in spanish, is more easy to understand in my mother tong, but overall it is a very intuitive, easy and comprensive curse!
No Title
No Title
Una puebra increible y de muy grande ayuda
Fue algo muy importante y de gran aprendizaje para mi, al aprender todo lo necesario para dar un buen servicio, sin duda estoy muy agradecido por la guia de estudio, esoy listo para dar un excelente servicio
IM SOO HAAPY
I AM VERY HAPPY TO HAVE LEARNED
muy buen curso
tome este curso para mi daycare y me gusto mucho.
No Title
No Title
Nadia ALVARENGA
Bad
Horrible
No funcionó bien 🙄🙄 además no es para trabajadores de Sanitazion además la aplicación es mala no se escucha los audios
na
na
Starting at $6.95
FOOD MANAGER
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Food Manager Reviews
4.9
Good
It was thorough and to the point!
New Beginnings
My favorite part of this training was that I am able to do it at my own pace. Also if I needed I could easily go back to previous module in order to understand it more clearly.
informative
All the lesson were very informative!
EFECTIVO CLARO Y FÁCIL DE ENTENDER
Es practico y la voz de la instructora es agradable. Se capta casi toda la información y no cansa
Easy and thorough
This was a perfect review after 5 years. Easy to follow and appreciated the practice questions.
Great course
Even though i have been in the industry for over 20 years its always a good refresher to study this again. Thanks
VERY AND CLEAR COUSRE
GOOD AND CLEAR TO LEARN ON THE SCREEN
it is a really good course helped me a lot
Excellent Food Training Tutorial
This food saftey course brushes over the most important parts with the different food processes of receiving, processing, maintaining, and serving. As a lot of the information has been common sense, it is a good reminder to relearn as it’s important to make sure the food is safe for the customers to eat. I did also learn a lot of valuable information about the different food temperatures I didn’t know before taking the course. Overall, I would recommend this to every food manager even if not all the sections apply to them.
great
I learned a lot
It was informative
It was informative.
Aprendi mucho gracias
Muy buena experiencia
"Quick" and easy
Was very easy to understand and well paced. Not overly stacked with useless dialogue but just enough to get you to understand what and why.
No Title
No Title
Great explanation
muy bien aprendisaje
aprendi mucho muchas gracias por este curso para mi fue genial
too long, redundant and time consuming
too long, redundant and time consuming
Safety First
I think that I have already had the basic needs and knowledges for managing the Food Handlers. The courses were not too short or too long. Easy to understand and easy to approach. Highly recommended.
me gusto
me enseno much as cosas nuevas
Food Manager Reviews
4.9
Good
It was thorough and to the point!
New Beginnings
My favorite part of this training was that I am able to do it at my own pace. Also if I needed I could easily go back to previous module in order to understand it more clearly.
informative
All the lesson were very informative!
EFECTIVO CLARO Y FÁCIL DE ENTENDER
Es practico y la voz de la instructora es agradable. Se capta casi toda la información y no cansa
Easy and thorough
This was a perfect review after 5 years. Easy to follow and appreciated the practice questions.
Great course
Even though i have been in the industry for over 20 years its always a good refresher to study this again. Thanks
VERY AND CLEAR COUSRE
GOOD AND CLEAR TO LEARN ON THE SCREEN
it is a really good course helped me a lot
Excellent Food Training Tutorial
This food saftey course brushes over the most important parts with the different food processes of receiving, processing, maintaining, and serving. As a lot of the information has been common sense, it is a good reminder to relearn as it’s important to make sure the food is safe for the customers to eat. I did also learn a lot of valuable information about the different food temperatures I didn’t know before taking the course. Overall, I would recommend this to every food manager even if not all the sections apply to them.
great
I learned a lot
It was informative
It was informative.
Aprendi mucho gracias
Muy buena experiencia
"Quick" and easy
Was very easy to understand and well paced. Not overly stacked with useless dialogue but just enough to get you to understand what and why.
No Title
No Title
Great explanation
muy bien aprendisaje
aprendi mucho muchas gracias por este curso para mi fue genial
too long, redundant and time consuming
too long, redundant and time consuming
Safety First
I think that I have already had the basic needs and knowledges for managing the Food Handlers. The courses were not too short or too long. Easy to understand and easy to approach. Highly recommended.
me gusto
me enseno much as cosas nuevas
Starting at $49.95
ALCOHOL TRAINING
Alcohol Training Reviews
4.8
No Title
Very informative
Necessary for job. Lots of good information. Somewhat repetitive in areas.
No Title
very informative
I like that there are small test review between segments
NOT BAD BUT....
could be better. thank you for your help and support.
No Title
No Title
No Title
No Title
review
very informative
No Title
good
this ia a good training but its supper time consuming
Straightforward Education
Easy to follow and use for RBS certification.
Painless
Like the videos.
Great Alcohol Service Training
Checked all the boxes, was easy to follow and really helped me get up to date on everything I needed to know!
No Title
Extensive but clear and concise
No Title
The module videos were engaging.
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food handler/ alcohol
i learned so many things and taking this curse was helpful in so many ways that can help you later on in your jobs or in life since it gives you good info
Alcohol Training Reviews
4.8
No Title
Very informative
Necessary for job. Lots of good information. Somewhat repetitive in areas.
No Title
very informative
I like that there are small test review between segments
NOT BAD BUT....
could be better. thank you for your help and support.
No Title
No Title
No Title
No Title
review
very informative
No Title
good
this ia a good training but its supper time consuming
Straightforward Education
Easy to follow and use for RBS certification.
Painless
Like the videos.
Great Alcohol Service Training
Checked all the boxes, was easy to follow and really helped me get up to date on everything I needed to know!
No Title
Extensive but clear and concise
No Title
The module videos were engaging.
No Title
No Title
food handler/ alcohol
i learned so many things and taking this curse was helpful in so many ways that can help you later on in your jobs or in life since it gives you good info
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