The Psychology of your Menu

HospiBuz Desk

Menu is the first thing a customer receives in your restaurant. And if your menu is not appealing, your customer loses his interest in eating and this results in affecting your economy. Menu is something which expresses your restaurant’s personality. Your menu should be prepared according to your business goals, it should increase your profitability and should enchant your customers. Menu is not about just listing the items and placing its prices. There is a proper way of it. It should be designed in terms of the customer’s psychology. This is called Menu Engineering. You design your menu according to it and it increases your profit and your customer buys what you want them to buy.

The Golden Triangle

When a customer looks at the menu there is a psychology involved in it. Most of the people look in the middle. Their eyes first catch the things written in the middle. Then they go to the top right corner and finally to the top left corner. This is called the Golden Triangle by restaurant menu engineers. One should put here the dishes with the highest profit margin. There is a difference between the most expensive dish and the dish which provides the highest amount of profit.
Dishes which provide the highest profit are supposed to come in this triangle. If your dishes don’t serve your profitability goal, consider putting another dishes. By this, you can monitor what actually belongs to the golden triangle. In this area you can put more than one dish, just make sure that the first two are the top selling ones. Diners don’t really prefer to look at the back of the menu. Don’t hide your dishes there. This rule applies for the lower left corner of the page. This is a place for the meals you don’t want them to order.

Colour choice matters.

Somethings are necessary to be paid attention when you are planning the colours of your menu.

1. green colour makes them think of the fresh food coming straight from the garden.

2. Orange is a light colour filled with delicious qualities. It stimulates the appetite. It is associated with healthy food.

3. Yellow grabs the attention and stimulates the appetite.

4. Use red to make people order the dishes you want them to.

5. Blue is a soothing colour. It creates a calming effect. But if you want your customers to feel hungry, feed and go then blue is a bad option.

6. Yellow and red are said to be the best combination for a menu.

Play with money appearance.

Some say that removing the money sign help the customer spent more money while some suggest that removing the money sign makes them think that they are not spending the actual money.

Here are some other tricks:

1. Put some expensive dishes on your menu even if you don’t serve them. This makes the other expensive dishes look cheaper and the customer finds it a deal.

2. End you price with .95 instead of .00, this makes your dish look cheap. E.g. 9.95 instead of 10.00. Also, make sure not to use .99. It decreases your standard.

3. Serve food in two portions. It is a strategy called bracketing. Serve small amount for less price and a large amount for more price. Customer will purchase small amount for less price which will provide you profit.

4. Keep in mind the average income of the folks in your area and plan your dishes and its prices accordingly.

Plan the layout.

The organisation of your menu works as a guiding factor. Never use columns in your menu. The customer notices the price directly. Use fancy language on your menu. Describe your dish in approximately 10 words. It makes them look worth spending money. Make the names of your dish Nostalgic. E.g. turn butter chicken into Nawab’s butter chicken. It sounds more appealing and worth spending money. Never include more than 7 dishes in a category. It confuses the customer and they end up eating something they have eaten before or something which is the cheapest.
Keep your menu updated. Add new dishes regularly and remove the old ones. Offer new dishes on occasions. The ingredients which you are using in the most expensive dishes, use them in other dishes also. Else, they will end up getting spoiled and this will hurt your economy.
Expensive Decoy

Your customer’s imagination also plays a significant role in their ordering food. Make your menu clear and easy to read. Use high-quality printing for your menu. Make sure to use pictures of dishes on your menu. Print the pictures of High Digital Quality.
These are some of the things which should be paid attention to while planning your restaurant menu.