Menu Engineering: My Top 10 Ingredients for a great Dessert Menu.

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

We’ve looked at why selling desserts in your business is so fundamental and we’ve drilled down into the philosophy that goes into creating a great dessert menu. In this article, I want to share some of the Patissier’s craft and menu know-how: the basic ingredients if you will...

Oven-fresh bakes served warm
With so many great tarts, pies and cake recipes to choose from, this should be a no-brainer. Bear in mind that guests like to choose something they wouldn’t normally attempt at home. And remember the golden rule: SERVE IT WARM! This gives the impression that it is straight from the oven, even if your dessert is bought in (and there are some good ones on the market). 

Something tangy, fruity, light and moussy
From Key Lime Pie to Passion Fruit Bavarois, a tangy light mousse-like dessert will always be a popular choice after a main course. Personally I love to savour the moment by enjoying this with a teaspoon. 

Mmmm… Chocolate
No self-respecting dessert card should go without a dream choice for Chocoholics. Keep it small, rich and luxurious. And remember a really good quality bitter chocolate pairs beautifully with Red wine… perhaps to finish after that steak?

A Nursery Pud
Old fashioned favourites will never go out of fashion. Serve them hot and with lashings of custard or some ice cream.

The Best Quality Ice Cream you can afford
Always include a selection of good quality ice cream. If you have the luxury of making your own, then offer an interesting choice. Vanilla will always sell, but asparagus ice cream will engage the customer to browse more closely. A great up-sell technique is to pair your flavours with a suitable liqueur to pour over e.g. Vanilla Ice Cream with a shot of Baileys… 

Low Calorie, High Impact

Offer Fresh Fruits and/or Sorbet
Always have a low fat or healthy option so that nobody feels left out when the table is ordering. (My favourite lines from Fawlty Towers when two diners requested if they could cancel their Fresh Fruit Salad: “Ah, I’m sorry, the Chef has already opened the tin.” That’s NOT what I’m talking about here!) 

Classics add class 
Connoisseurs of a good pud will appreciate any nod to the classics. From an authentic Zugerkirsch Torte made with fiery Kirsch from Zug itself to a flamboyant Crepe Suzette flambé cooked at the table (isn’t it time this came back into fashion?). Or perhaps an understated, but perfectly executed Tart au Citron. 

A Creme Brulée to die for..
Personally, I always judge a restaurant on it’s Creme Brûlée. Why? Because with so few ingredients and limited presentation (this is a myth), there is so much that can go wrong. Right? But get it perfect and it’s a real treat. And don’t be afraid to throw in some flavours. Caramelised Roasted Hazelnuts or Berries soaked in rum can really lift a brulee out of the doldrums.

All cheeses great and small
Whether you offer a full cheese trolley presented at the table or a simple plated selection, no dessert menu is complete without it. 

- Here’s a strategy if you have a small operation and are worried about wastage. Choose 3 to 5 good quality cheeses across the range and offer them as a small slice paired with a drink that compliments their flavour. So a vintage stilton paired with a wee glass of Port, or an aged Cheddar with a small bottle of Ale. When I did this in my business years ago, I was amazed at the number of people who chose the cheese option because they fancied that particular drink to round off their meal. Give it a trial.. you might be surprised too. 

Are you making the most of your cheese selection?

Use the full Flavour Palette
- A few for reference: In Winter think caramel, coffee, hazelnut, peanut, pistachio, cinnamon, clove, baileys, whiskey or almond as flavour bases.
In Summer think orange, lemon, lime, vanilla, cardamom, lavender, raspberry, strawberry, passion fruit, mango, banana, Malibu, cointreau and blackcurrant as flavour bases.

And finally, add a touch of humour
Laughter is the best medicine so the saying goes. For that reason, it’s always good to throw in a quote or a funny reference. Here’s my favourite, which I have always put at the top of my dessert menus to get the ball rolling:

“Stressed spelled backwards is Desserts. Coincidence? I think not.” - Anon

Hopefully this advice will give you some inspiration to go back and revisit your dessert menu to see where you can maximise your sales.

And don't forget to keep checking back as I have a few more menu engineering tips to share with you soon, including a Price Point Strategy and, in answer to a great question from Jenny on LinkedIn, the impact your Font choice can have on your guest's perception.

Menu Engineering: 14 Principles for Selling Great Desserts

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

Before you start building your dessert menu, start with this in mind: What if you had to offer desserts to a family of six (perhaps your own family..)?

Now, go round the table and try and guess their choices… What would Granny have? (Something soft, perhaps some ice cream.) Or that teenage daughter watching her waistline? (How many calories are in sorbet Mum?) What about Dad? (Creme Brûlée… I like what I know.) Or Mum? (Ooh chocolate, ‘cos I deserve a treat!) Or Granddad who’s kinda stuck in his ways? (I like me custard, does it come with custard?) 

As you can see, a picture of what might be on you dessert menu starts to take shape...

With this in mind, here are my topmost guiding principles in creating a powerful Dessert Menu that will generate sales:

Keep it to eight items
The more choice you have the more wastage you have.

Rotate your dessert list on a fortnightly or monthly basis
Achieving consistency takes a little time, so changing your menu too often can have a negative impact on quality.

Daily Specials
If you have a lot of regular diners, then offer one or two daily specials. These then tie in with the seasons and annual celebration days such as Shrove Tuesday.

Think contrast
...creamy vs crunchy, gooey vs brittle, warm vs frozen, perfumed vs tangy

Portion Control
- To ensure you control your food cost, items served in ramekins, glasses or coupes should be encouraged, especially if you are on a tight budget. And since everyone pays the same, they should get the same.

- For pies, tarts and gateaux, use one of these. They’re available in different denominations.

- If you’re following the latest trend of rectangular shaped bakes (what Patissier's sometimes call a tranche) then use a ruler (or scale) to ensure portion control.

- Bottom line? The trick is to leave your guests full, but wanting more...

Garnish, not garish

Creme Brûlée: Clever use of Caramel to add lift.

Get rid of that stupid out-of-season strawberry or mint garnish on everything. It costs you on every single plate you send out and doesn’t have the impact you think it does. Clever use of Chocolate, Caramel or even Tuille Biscuit can be far more dramatic.

Take a blank canvas
Invest in some great plates. I mean, really great plates. You can add a premium for this and it will have the impact you were looking for with that stoopid strawberry thingy.

Artistic flair
Dusting your plate with cocoa powder or icing sugar is a quick and dirty way to making a dessert look artistic. You can even cut out a stencil of your logo and use that. (Make sure the waitstaff know to serve any dusted part of the plate AWAY from the guest to avoid getting it on their clothes.)

Keep your reader informed
Don’t forget to mention if a dessert is Gluten Free, Low Calorie, Fat Free; Contains Nuts or any other dietary information that your guests should know about.

All good things
And if it takes time to prepare (such as a souffle), let them know in advance on the menu as well.

Create the experience
Never miss an opportunity to celebrate a guest’s birthday with a candle in their dessert. (More on this to follow in a separate post. Yeah, it's THAT important.)

Sell the Experience
If any of your desserts have a story, or an inspiration, or a unique selling point, then tell it. People are intrigued by this and will give it a go to see for themselves.

Don't ignore Cheese
In my experience, the type of person who orders cheese tends to be a good spender, especially when it comes to wine. If you offer a great cheese selection, you will encourage them to come back often more. At whatever level you decide to pitch it, make sure your cheese is fresh and preferably at room temperature, biscuits crunchy and fruit/celery washed.

A sale is a sale, even if it's half a sale
And if your guests are wavering, make sure service staff know to remind them that all of your desserts come with two teaspoons should they like to try one to share. It may even lead to coffee or digestif sales…

Apply these guiding principles to your dessert menu philosophy and you will have a range of products and services that your Service Staff can believe in and SELL. 

In my next post, I will be looking at the dishes that all good dessert menus should have. 

Menu Engineering: The Profit's in the Pudding

Worth a re-read. 

Especially this:

If you want to enjoy your 'just desserts' through increased dessert revenue, here are three simple rules: 

• Mobilise your team: if they believe they have a fabulous product, they will sell it. 

• Sell the experience: an engaging menu that tells a story will pique the imagination. (Perhaps you recently served a celebrity... Share that story and people will want to try the dish they had.)  

• Keep it simple: reasonably priced, homemade, classic puds served elegantly will always win through. 

(Originally posted on 16Jan11)

Menu Engineering: Winning Words Your Menu Needs Today.

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

Dining out is a social experience. Think about those words for a moment: Social. Experience. 

Mrs K. enjoying a chat over lunch at The Cube. (R)

Social in my mind means conversation, to regale a story or to enjoy your dining companion’s perspective. And what better way to trigger those stories, that human interaction, than with the document your diners collectively hold in their hands: your menu. As your guests browse the Chef’s list of recommended dishes, any emotive words or descriptive phrases will help trigger conversation. THAT is where the experience comes in. Your guests don’t just eat - they have a dining experience. And customers WILL pay a premium for the pleasure.

The funny thing is, they may not even remember what they ordered when they later tell friends about the meal they enjoyed at your great restaurant, (put that down to your awesome wine sales technique), but they will remember what a great conversation they had as they reminisce. Before you’ve even lifted a pen or a pan, your menu has captured the imagination and generated some great word-of-mouth referrals. Now you’re really cooking.

So here are a few pointers that I tend to use when describing my dishes:

Use Femininity 

If your menu appeals to ladies, then the fellas will follow. How many restaurants have mid-week tables of ladies enjoying a girl’s night out? Get them returning on the weekend with hubby or that dishy new beau with words like fluffy, softly, lightly-scented, gently folded, delicate. You get the idea...

Steaks are Masculine

Because men love to work that Barbeque. As do some ladies.

So use words like Seared or Pan-fried or Char-grilled - all manly things to do to a steak or a piece of chicken.

What other dishes could be framed as ‘masculine’?

Who Cooked It?

One of the most powerful ways of engaging your customers and your team is by mentioning the people involved. If Chef Robert makes the bread, then say so. Anna's Red Cabbage Coleslaw or Jan's Sandwiches (as we had in our pub once upon a time) really personalises the experience and wins loyalty. In fact Jan used to have to come out to personally inform our guests what her sandwich of the day was. Why? Because they loved it and came back time and again for more.

Drop that letter ‘a’

This drives me absolutely nuts. Welcome to Mediocrityville.

“Steak served with a Mushroom Sauce”. Why is that ‘a’ in there? Get rid of it.

Char-grilled Steak with Mushroom Sauce

Avoid the word ‘with’. 

Your page is valuable real estate. Don’t clutter it up with unnecessary with's, and's and a’s. Use a comma instead.

Fish Cakes with a Mustard Sauce becomes 

Fish Cakes, Mustard Sauce or 

Dill-Scented Salmon Cakes, Wholegrain Mustard Sauce or 

Salmon Cakes on Lightly Foamed Creamy Mustard Sauce

(Which dish would you choose?)

Invoke that sense of Smell 

Smells tap into your reader’s memory bank and that can be very compelling when making a choice on what to eat.

Scented with, infused, minted, pungent, caramelised

Describe Textures in your dish titles. Again this is great for feminising a dish.

A sauce can be creamy, shiny, silky, velvety...

Think Nigella...

Think Nigella: Use terms that invoke luxury

Smothered, rich, oozing, Luxurious, tipsy, soft-centred, gooey...

Think Heston: Invoke memories (Think of school days and apple pie here...)

Old-fashioned, retro, childhood, vintage, classical…

Think Delia: Mention the cooking method, but in a feminine way.

Gently Baked, lightly poached, herb-roasted, slow-braised...

Think Jamie: Describe how it’s dressed on the plate:

drizzled, a squeeze of, shavings, a cordon, sprinkled, layered, piled, bosh!

Compare and contrast

It’s a writing trick, but it’s also a way of constructing a dish, so an example could be:

Iced Parfait of Caramelised Hazelnuts, Warm Chocolate Sauce (Hot/Cold) or

Velvety Chocolate Mousse, Peanut Butter Brittle (Soft/Hard)

Talk up your Provenance

If you’re not mentioning how you source your food, then start today. 

Be aware however, of how you go about that. There is a current trend to mention the farmer, butcher, grower, cheesemaker, trawlerman or every man and his dog to get across the point that you are sourcing ethically and locally. If you think it makes sense to your customers, continue doing it. 

Personally, I find it clutters up the menu (Pan-Seared Red Tractor Sirloin, Creamy Sauce of John Smith foraged Wild Mushrooms just doesn’t work.) What does work is perhaps a small text box at the bottom or at the back of a menu that mentions all of those acknowledgements and logos in one hit. 

Oh, and train your staff to be ready for the question from inquisitive or enthusiastic guests. Those you nourish will flourish.

I hope this has given you some inspiration to revisit your menu wording and create that connection with your customers that’ll have them coming back for more. For more ideas on how to be creative with your dish descriptions, open any cookbook and have a browse. More than recipes, they are lifestyle aspirations. Have you got that on your menu?

Bookmark or Subscribe now: Upcoming posts will look more specifically at unlocking Dessert’s Hidden Treasure and the psychology behind a great Price Point Plan.

Menu Engineering: Emotion is an Ingredient

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

Using emotional touch points to describe your food is a sure-fire way of engaging your customers. They know chefs are passionate. They know it’s hot in the kitchen and tempers flare. They know chefs are great in bed. (I made that up. Patissier's are.) So why can’t we display some of that raw emotion on our Menu. After all, it’s a key ingredient in what inspired any dish in the first place; a memory, a concept, an occasion, or as a tribute or even to emulate perhaps.

If you ask any Chef what his all-time favourite dish is, invariably it’ll be something cooked by his Mother or Grandmother. Or where does he like to eat out on his night off? Again, I would lay good money on the choice being Indian or Chinese. So why on earth does that same Chef insist on handing us a shopping list of ingredients in any restaurant worth wearing a tie to. 

You know the Carte I’m talking about; weighted sheet, off-white, textured, say 200gsm and sparingly held together in some kind of bamboo or leather contraption. 5 Starters, 5 Mains, 4 puds and trolley of cheeses, at a supplement. Naturellement. And don’t be surprised if you find the price spelled out in longhand at the bottom. There is after all empirical evidence this will increase sales. Your eyes wander down the page and we’re back to that seemingly random list of things: 

Scottish halibut, fregola, blood orange, sea kale

Marcus Wareing

“What the hell is fregola?” “Sshh, the waiter’s coming?” That particular dish is taken from one of Marcus Wareing’s menus at The Berkeley. You can see the rest of it here. (And for the pedants: Times regular, 17 point and very sparing on the capitalization.)

Now, what’s worth mentioning at this point is - and I want to make this very clear - there is NOTHING WRONG with that style of menu. OK? I am not saying it is wrong. For Marcus Wareing, it is the culmination of many, many well thought out decisions and it works for his business. What I am saying is that we can’t ALL be Marcus Wareing and we don’t ALL have two Michelin stars to back up those little words he sprinkles sparingly around the page. 

So how should ‘the rest of us’ describe our menu choices? Let’s go back to that chair you are sitting in where your customer normally is. Now, imagine a very suave Italian (or French) Maitre d’Hotel describing the dish above to the lady next to you. Actually, if you’ve seen this in real life, it’s a thing of beauty - these guys really know how to turn on the charm. The Halibut could be described as ‘very light’ or ‘beautifully fresh’ (say it with the accent) or even ‘incredibly delicate’. The Fregola is from Sardinia, so again our Italian friend would invoke the beautiful sea breeze where his Mother used to make such a delicate pasta. The blood orange adds ‘zing’ and the sea kale gives it a beautiful ‘finishing touch’. Now you tell me... what have we learned about this dish? Nothing. Except my dining partner now wants to go to Sardinia with Señor Sassi and orders the fish just to make him happy. Sold! And the side to go with it.

If only we could take all that flirtatious charm and sprinkle it on every guest. Oh wait... by invoking the emotive power of language on our menu, WE CAN. 

So the next time you are writing your menu Chef, try to imagine standing AT THE TABLE and explaining the dish IN PERSON. Yeah. Use those words.

In my next post, I will share some of the winning words and phrases that have proven to drive sales in my business.

Menu Engineering: The Power of 'Recommended'

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of having a great introduction on your menu. Suddenly, this gives the feeling of having a conversation with the owner. Now, you ask, which dishes should I try to further the experience. 

The best way is to highlight certain dishes is with a ‘Recommended’ symbol. But it is a minefield. Yes, they have to be dishes that will work best for your business in terms of revenue, but they also have to work for the guest in terms of quality. Balancing that customer satisfaction with meeting the targets of your bottom line is a very tricky business. 

A great example of Recommendations influencing choice.

To start with, every chef will say that ALL the dishes on their menu are good and will naturally gravitate towards the ones they like to eat. But let’s take a hard-nosed approach for a change..

Here are the key questions that you need to ask in deciding a recommended dish:

Which dishes are super-popular and bring people back for more?

A bit obvious, but surprisingly it’s not necessarily the dish the Chef thinks it is. He might think it’s his fantastic Duck a la whatever-he-calls-it, when in fact it’s the lemon tart served after he’s gone home. That’s why patissier’s rule!

Which dishes are really straightforward to prepare in terms of mise-en-place?

The dish looks good in terms of food cost, but it might be killing your labour budget. At St Cross College, our chef loves to serve soup for big functions. Makes sense… doesn’t it? The problem is a waiter can only carry two bowls to a table, so I need more staff. By encouraging the chef to change to a risotto for example, the waiter can carry 3 bowls. Now we can serve 120 guests with fewer staff.

Which dishes are easiest to dress on or have plated during service?

Prepare for success by making sure you don’t get a traffic jam at the stove. It may be popular with the guests, but not if they have to wait for an hour for it to be served.

Which dishes use the least expensive ingredients?

Sometimes a dish can be just that simple; cheap and easy to prepare. Nursery dishes and homely classics will never go out of fashion it seems. So don’t overlook them in favour of celebrity ingredients.

In terms of dietary requirements, which dishes appeal to the widest audience?

This is especially true in banqueting or for weddings where pork, shellfish, beef, horse (couldn’t resist) or fois gras are best avoided, unless of course you know your audience really well.

Which dishes are priced the most expensive on the menu?

One lesson I learned in my restaurants in Kathmandu is that people love to show off. To flaunt their wealth. So let them. Sometimes it does make sense to recommend the most expensive dish.

Here’s a sneaky one: which dish requires one or two sides to make it complete?

The dish itself might seem reasonably priced, but throw in a couple of sides and your bottom line is looking good. Sound familiar?

Another bonus one: Which dishes offer supplementary upgrades? e.g. Prawn vs Lobster Surf n’ Turf?

So you recommend the basic version and allow guests to ‘upgrade’ if they wish. What’s wrong with that?

And would the Chef know which dishes promote the sale of some great wines?
This is where good restaurants become great. Involving the sommelier, the maitre d’ and the chef in the conversation will really drive sales. A very delicate terrine, will encourage the sale of a Premier Cru in the hands of the right Sommelier. But if you allow the Chef to recommend his homely soup, which probably is great and ticks lots of boxes, you do lose the opportunity to upsell on your wine.

I know there are a lot of analytical tools out there to help you arrive at the right recommendation list, but here’s what we did at my place in Kathmandu. We monitored sales over a six week period. Then we costed EVERY SINGLE dish. Next we got the Heads of Kitchen, Dining Room, Bar and Accounts around a table and we thrashed out the merits of each dish on whether it should be recommended or not. 

What we learned was that, our two most popular main courses happened to be our least profitable. (And it’s hard to put the price up when competing with the hundreds of restaurants nearby). We decided to keep them as ‘Recommended’ because people would choose them anyway, and they’ll come back for more if they do. However we offset that with a couple of delicious starters that were surprisingly inexpensive to produce. Our secret weapon however is our dessert menu which we believe is the real differentiator between us and our competitors in Kathmandu. That will be the subject for another post soon.

Menu Engineering: Upsell While They're Browsing

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

This is a brief post, but it is vital in getting those extra sales ringing through that till. If you have an engaging introduction set out in a nicely presented menu, people will naturally go on to browse it from beginning to end. 

During that time, they’ll probably want to order a drink. And since they also feel peckish, I'm guessing they wouldn’t mind a little snacky-bite (as Mrs. K calls it) before they err, eat. I now I usually do.

I mean, think about it: The table have mostly arrived, but they’re just waiting for one more guest. So you give them the menus and they start reading the intro (‘Wow, what a great story, I’d love to do that’) and  perusing the recommended dishes (more on that in my next post).

‘Ooh look, nibbles - at the top of the page.’

Congratulations. You just gave them an opportunity to spend some money.

Polenta with Fig

Simply put, browsing the menu is a fantastic opportunity to up-sell. From Olives and Breadsticks to Mini Fish and Chips and Smoked Salmon Canapés. The list is endless. 

Three rules to follow however:

• Make them expensive (if you dare)*
• Serve them quick, 
• Don’t make them filling. 

*Why make them expensive: because people who choose expensive snacky-bites while they browse the menu are making a statement of intent. They intend to enjoy themselves, whatever the price. So serve them up quick and get ready to follow suit on the wine and supplements.

*There is another reason to make them expensive, which I learned the hard way. Some diners will have nibbles INSTEAD of starters! I know, right? It’s a little annoying when it happens, but console yourself in the knowledge that you made good margin on the snacks they did order.

Once those drinks and nibbles are on the table, you're next question is; What steps have you taken to influence their food choices that work for you? 

Check in with my next post to find out more.

Menu Engineering: Selling the Sizzle

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

You most probably have a menu in use in your restaurant. You may even be very proud of that menu because it has been a labour of love. Good for you. Or you may have put something quick together as you dealt with consultants and contractors trying to get open on time, promising yourself to come back and improve it. Good, do it now. 

In any case, I want you to take a long hard look at your menu and start to think about it in detail. If someone has NEVER been in your restaurant before, what is this menu saying from the second they get it placed in their hands (or read it on the blackboard; or click it online). Is it beautifully weighted, to match the tablecloths? Is it brightly coloured to reflect the buzz of the place? Is it desktop-printed to reflect the freshness of the daily specials? Every menu is different, but they all have the same objective: to grab your customer’s attention and convince them that they have chosen the right place for spending as much as they can afford on this visit.

So where do you begin? The first thing I like to do is put myself in the chair of the customer. Things look awfully different from this perspective. You start to ask yourself, as a customer would, Why have I chosen this restaurant? Who owns this place? Who is serving me? (It could be the owner or is it part of a bigger chain.), Who’s cooking my food? What made you guys open this place? And now get someone to hand you your menu. How does it feel? What does it say about you as a customer? Do you feel valued by this business? 

Now, ask yourself this: where on your menu does it answer all these questions? This is where I think there’s an opportunity to ‘sell your story’. Raymond Blanc does it at Le Manoir. Peter Boizot did it at Pizza Express. Even Nandos do it. 

And they’re all pretty successful, so do YOU put an introduction on your menu? You know, something like... 

“Welcome to Peaches & Cream Restaurant, My husband Renoir and I had a vision of growing our own organic fruit and vegetables and thought wouldn’t it be fun to have a place where our friends could come over to taste the latest produce. Our Chef Antonio is passionate about letting the ingredients stand out in every dish he cooks. And don’t forget to leave some room for dessert. We wish you Bon Appetit, Candice” 

Suddenly, I feel I’ve just had a conversation with Candice…. She’s married to Renoir (is he French?…). They grow organic fruits and vegetables; Wow, how idyllic. It must taste amazing. They mention friends, so they must be popular. And they opened this for them? What a generous couple. Chef Antonio... nice name, sounds Italian - wonder if he looks like Antonio Banderos? Hey, perhaps the pasta is good. Simple food, the way I like it. Hmmm, 'leave some room for some dessert’ … interesting. I love dessert. I wonder if peaches and cream are on the menu? Bon Appetit? Why, thank you Candice. This is going to be a real TREAT!

So many assumptions based on such a short intro. But most importantly of all, you have moved the value proposition AWAY from cost and made it an emotional one. In other words you sell the sizzle, not the steak.

By sharing your story, you put your guest at ease and invite them in. Now they’re thinking ‘I’m going to browse this menu and see what else I can learn about my new-found friends. I’m starving…’ Now it’s time to bring on a very under-utilised sales opportunity: nibbles while you browse. Check in with my next post to find out more.

Series: The Art of Menu Engineering

This post is part of a series to help you build a winning menu that will engage with your customers, assist your team and most importantly, drive your bottom line.

I work with lots of very passionate chefs who love to cook great dishes from locally sourced food and in return we are rewarded with really happy customers. So when those chefs talk to each other about menu engineering in our food trend workshops, they speak from a position of knowledge and experience. 

French Laundry's Thomas Keller confers with his chefs

Time and again, terms like menu-busters; food heroes; increasing GP (gross profit); achieving margin (pretty much the same thing) and even up-selling or cross-selling are thrown in and we all go home feeling warm and fuzzy because we feel we've learned a valuable commercial lesson. What strikes me though, is that I don’t see the front of house guys in this conversation. Nor have we considered asking the marketing or retail-experienced guys what they might think.

So here’s a fundamental question I have for any chef who wants to practice or teach menu engineering: have you owned your own business and relied on that same menu structure to meet rent and payroll at month-end? Rarely the answer is yes. But one thing is certain, it takes more than menu-busters and margin to create a powerful revenue-driving sales tool that any great menu should be.

Let me take you back 14 years to my experience of shouldering that burden in my new restaurant which had only opened 12 weeks previously at the time. On any given night we were expecting 300 guests in for dinner of mostly trekking and expat groups from all over the world. So far so good, you might say. The thing is, I was the only person in the business who spoke English fluently and in the dining room, many of our customers spoke English as a second language. Yeah, that’s kind of a challenge. 

Now Chef, write me a menu that will sell our food. And our Wine. And Desserts. And Coffee. And breakfast tomorrow. And goes on to create repeat business through word-of-mouth. But most importantly right now, will overcome the waiter’s inability to SELL due to his shyness or his language barrier. When it’s put in those terms, you learn pretty damn quick. 

Chef Gary Jones writes his Lunch Menu

To begin with, I guess the first question to ask is this: what is Menu Engineering? Well as expected, those boffins at Wikipedia have an answer for that, but they don’t have THE answer. Because that really depends on your business and your customers. What I can do however, is throw some perspective on how I have looked at this conundrum over the years. Up front, it’s about psychology. Behind the scenes however, it’s about growing your profits. 

If your menu is not driving sales, then tear it up and start again. You owe it to yourself, your staff and your investors.

Over the next few posts I want to address these key areas:

• Your Menu Introduction: Selling the Sizzle
• Upsell while they're browsing
• The power of ‘Recommended’?
• Using Emotion in your Dish Descriptions
• Winning Words and Phrases
• A Price point plan

Just to be clear about what I mean when I ask, what is a menu?, check out my previous post and then we can look in more detail at some of those key elements in creating a sales tool that works for you.

Milestones in our Lives

Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler described songs as "milestones in our lives". I think he is on to something. If I want to cast my mind back to a happier, or perhaps more melancholy time, I will put on a certain album that reminds me of that moment in my life.

I think it's also true of dishes we cook. Especially if you are a chef. As you move from one influence to another, from one job to another or one country to another, there are certain dishes that become bookmarks in our culinary life. The question is, what sort of menu would they make up today?

Kilroy's Lemon Tart

Anton Mosimann's Bread and Butter Pudding will be a dish that had the most indelible mark on my career and as a result I have a real love/hate relationship with it. On one hand, it opened my eyes to a new way of cooking traditional classics and through it's popularity, I got to travel around the world making it for some very special occasions. On the other hand I made so much of it that today I would have to be super-hungry to eat even a spoonful.

Kilroy's Lemon Tart became my signature dessert over a two year stint in Bermuda where I made about 5000 portions by hand on a Formica table that I hope I never have to see again. And setting up in Nepal allowed me to develop Seared Chicken Breast stuffed with Nak's Cheese (- yes the spelling is correct: if you’re thinking the milk came from a yak, it's worth bearing in mind that a yak is male) and remains the signature dish in our restaurant to this day.

Dessert 'Wizard of Oz'

Thinking back to some of the life-changing milestones in my life's map of discovery, I fondly remember suchdishes as Sauerkraut in St. Moritz or Thukpa in Tengboche or Sel Roti in Sikkim. Which make me think that perhaps the greatest thing about cooking is that the act of doing so - with it's aromas, textures and flavours - will take you right back to that place or moment in time you want to experience again. Like listening to a song.

More importantly, this allows you to ‘emotionally connect’ with your guest in a very fundamental way, either by sharing with them YOUR experiences through a carefully crafted menu or by allowing them to create new milestones for themselves by putting them in a great atmosphere, where the service and food will be immortalised in their future memories and reminiscences.

The Profit's In The Pudding.

How often have you requested the bill at the 'end' of your meal, without being asked if you would like a dessert by your waiter?

It never fails to surprise me that any restaurant, especially an Indian or Chinese one for example, would pass up the massive opportunity to tap into the profitability that desserts - and liqueur coffees, cognacs or malt whisky - can be to their bottom line.  

Let's think for a moment about the costs involved in selling a steak or even a chicken tikka masala: 
• You have to invest heavily in a marketing campaign to get the customer in the door. 
• You have to invest substantially in the fixtures and fittings to get the venue right. 
• You have to invest in your linen, menu printing, crockery, cutlery and glassware to get the presentation right. 
• You have to ensure great ingredients to get the product right.  
• And you have to invest heavily in your team and your training to get the customer experience to the right standard. 

All this to sell that main course before simply allowing a lazy or incompetent waiter present the bill and letting them walk away without a further sale.    

With just a tiny addition to one or two of the above investments, your ability to sell a dessert makes the enterprise far more profitable, since the hard work has already been done in getting the point of sale already. 
 
With this in mind, lets think about the additional costs of tagging on that dessert on their bill:
• other than an engaging dessert menu, no extra marketing is needed since you all ready have your clientele 'in situ'. (Although more diners will be attracted on the promise of a decent pudding selection to round off their meal.)
• the fixtures and fittings have been admired so nothing extra required there. 
• The additional linen, menu printing, crockery, cutlery or glassware required is negligible since it was required anyway and therefore already in place.  
• There is an added cost due to the extra ingredients required, however this is instantly converted to profitable revenue with each sale. (In fact I would almost consider this an investment  - chefs will disagree, unless they gratefully count the cash at the end of the night.)
• The service staff are already in place. (And with these happier customers consequently paying bigger bills (and therefore leaving bigger tips), they will be highly incentivised to take on board the small additional training required to make that sale.
• And I have yet to meet a chef who does not want to do more with their knowledge and skill in the area of patisserie. Development in this key area could be just the incentive they need to stay longer with your team. 

If you want to enjoy your 'just desserts' through increased dessert revenue, here are three simple rules:
• Mobilise your team: if they believe they have a fabulous product, they will sell it.
• Sell the experience: an engaging menu that tells a story will pique the imagination. (Perhaps you recently served a celebrity... Share that story and people will want to try the dish they had.) 
• Keep it simple: reasonably priced, homemade, classic puds served elegantly will always win through.