Menu costing is one of the most important aspects of running a restaurant. Get it right, and your restaurant will remain profitable. Get it wrong, and you could find yourself bankrupt in a few months.
With food prices in flux and inflation still looming in 2023, it’s more important than ever for restaurant owners to adjust their menu prices. But where do you start? Let’s look at how to cost and price your menu items in the coming year.
When you sit down and look at a restaurant menu, there's a psychological standpoint for what you're viewing. In many cases, the menu has been engineered to show you the most popular menu items to make a sale and increase profits.
It's no secret that 80% of sales come from about 20% of the items on your menu for pizzeria business. For a pizzeria menu, the right engineering can help you make more sales and influence the sale of certain items.
The plant-based nutrition movement is growing but is your restaurant prepared? Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that the plant-based food alternatives market could reach $162 billion over the next decade. If those projections are accurate, vegan foods could comprise 7.7% of the protein market by 2030. Whether you're an existing restaurant looking to appeal to plant-based customers or want to open a vegan restaurant, these five vegan menu ideas can help you reach your goals.
When summer heats up, customers crave cold, light meals that are loaded with flavor. Adding cold dinners to your menu is a great way to cater to the summer crowd, but with so many options to choose from, you may not know where to start. Here are 13 cold dinner ideas for your restaurant.
The best condiments and most popular sauces tie a dish together. They fill flavor gaps and add to the dish's presentation. If you're missing a sweet or a sour, the right sauce can quickly and easily fill that void. Restaurants have long relied on condiments, sauces and dressings to elevate their menus.
Takeaway dining is on the rise, as fewer people are opting to dine-in at restaurants. Even as patrons return to restaurants, the lack of attention on takeaway dining has shifted. Restaurant owners realize that there is a large group of individuals that want to grab a restaurant menu, order, and pick up their own food. Every stakeholder in restaurant marketing must start optimizing their menu for delivery.
Menu descriptions sell your food. When a plate of fettuccine passes a person who is seated and fills the air with the aroma of cheese and heavy cream, it can entice a customer to order the dish. But for most customers, food descriptions are what help them determine what dish to order.
But you're a chef or restaurant owner, so you might not spend your free time on writing and haven't learned how to write a menu with mouthwatering descriptions of food.
Restaurants that offer food made-to-order can choose between two main options: cooking from scratch or offering pre-made meals. A lot of restaurants, especially smaller establishments, will purchase pre-made food and pass it off as their own, unique recipe.
The problem with pre-made menu items, in the sense that they were made by someone else or are frozen and need to be heated, is that you lose that unique flare for your food. If it tastes the same as the restaurant down the street, what will keep your customers coming back?
As a restaurant owner, you try to cater to a wide range of customer tastes. Business is business after all. But some items are more profitable than others. Increasing sales of these more profitable items will improve your bottom line.
How do you nudge customers towards these high-margin items? Here are 6 restaurant menu engineering tips.
Offering discounts to customers seems beneficial on the surface, and it can be, but it can also be bad for business. Sure, you're getting new customers through the door, but will your new business make up for the losses stemming from your discount offer?
Price discounting is both an art and a science. When done improperly, it can negatively affect your bottom line. So, what is a consequence of "discounting" when talking in economic terms?
