Reopening your restaurant after the COVID-19 pandemic is the perfect time to reconsider your menu design. With all of the changes to your service, update your menu to improve its accessibility to your customers. By following these tips, your menu will be effectively repurposed to excite your customers and make you more money.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Refocus Your Menu
Many restaurants are opting to refocus their menu, and cutting out low-margin menu items in order to streamline the ordering process. A trimmed down menu will also help to speed up the customer’s decision making, which will speed up service.
When cutting items from your menu, do research to discover which products are not integral to your restaurant. Consider the profit margins of each item, and start removing products that are no longer monetarily viable. Do your own market analysis to determine which products your customers enjoy the least.
By choosing to remove low-margin and unpopular products, you will be able to make changes to your menu without upsetting your customer base. Additionally, a slimmer menu helps to ease the burden of your employees by simplifying the dishes prepared by the kitchen staff.
With the ability to sort items by sales, you have the tools you need to easily discover which items maximize profit and are your most popular. With Rezku’s easy to use menu building tools, adjusting your menu has never been more straightforward.
The Art of Menu Design
When making changes to your menu, there are tricks that can help you maximize product sales. Well thought out menu design can help ensure profitability in these difficult times. Font size, item placement, and item prices are all tools that can be used to deliver a more efficient and appealing menu to your guests.
Your goal should be to make the menu as accessible as possible for your customers. Restructuring your menu with clearly defined and uncluttered sections can help guests make ordering decisions faster. It can also direct their attention to selections with better margins. Experts suggest that menu sections should contain from 6 to 10 options to not overwhelm customers with unnecessary options. Additionally, menu items placed towards the top right of the page tend to intrinsically grab the reader’s attention, so this space should be reserved for high-profit products.
Use boxes to wrap particularly popular menu items. The use of boxes will break up an otherwise monotonous menu, and make your high-margin menu items pop on the page.
Additionally, experts suggest removing the dollar sign from prices. Studies have shown that customers are more willing to pay higher prices when they are displayed without the dollar sign.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
The No Menu Solution
Menus are intended to be reused by many customers, which can create a risk of spreading germs. Cleaning every menu after it is used by a customer can be a time consuming task, and while you are likely already understaffed due to COVID-19, you need a better solution.
Restaurants are discovering that the need of physical menus is outdated. Some businesses are switching to large menus that are publicly displayed so that customers are saved the hassle of dealing with a personal menu. Other restaurants have discovered that digital menus delivered directly to the customer’s smartphone are surprisingly effective and intuitive to use.
Employing both of these menu strategies can help you to placate the fears of customers, and save your employees the cumbersome task of disinfecting every menu after use. Take precautions to ensure that products on the digital menu can be easily viewed by guests on a smartphone. Use font size and item placement to draw attention to your best selling products. Overall, you want your digital menu to be as easily accessible as your physical menu.
Most likely, digital menus won't entirely replace the need for physical menus, but every customer that chooses to use their smartphone to view your menu saves your servers time and improves their efficiency. By using disposable menus for other cases, you can entirely cut out the possibility of infection from guests handling your menus.
At Rezku, we offer tableside ordering as a solution. With tableside ordering, you can print out QR codes and leave them on your tables. When a customer sits at the table, they use their smartphone to scan the QR code which instantly brings them to your online menu. From here, the customer makes their order without even interacting with your servers directly. The table number is even included on the ticket when it comes through to the kitchen, so there is no confusion when the food is bussed.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Summary
Restaurants need to reconsider their use of menus as they reopen during the pandemic. Use this time to reorganize your menu to be more customer friendly.
One solution is to slim down your existing menu, and create a disposable version. Use reporting tools to discover which items are your most popular and which items can be removed without upsetting customers.
When altering your menu, here are tips and tricks that can help you to organize your products. The overall goal is customer accessibility, so design the menu to display items and prices clearly.
Digital menus are becoming more popular, and allow restaurants to do away with most physical menus. With only a smartphone, customers can view your menu and also minimize contact with public surfaces. With Rezku’s tableside ordering, guests can complete the entire ordering process without directly interacting with a server.
