Are you feeling like your profits have reached a plateau? Do your customers seem excited to dine at your restaurant, or complacent? According to restaurant marketing research, a redesigned menu—one in which incorporates both your food and drinks on one menu—can boost your profits by ten percent. Why not embrace the New Year with a new menu? Here’s the potential impact it can offer you.
Sell More With Food and Drink Pairings
As a successful restauranteur, think about the greatest selling tool you have at your disposal: the menu. Is your menu visually appealing? Is it up-to-date? Is it easy to navigate through? According to Pizza Today Magazine, you don’t have to make big changes in order to generate big profits: “A great menu does not have to be costly. If you take all the factors into account and create a simple, informative menu, that's really all you need. Restaurants today need to make their menus dynamic and add new things to keep customers interested, and take things off that customers don't order.”
Instead of giving your customers two menus—one for food and one for drinks/cocktails—condense it to one. That is, one amazing menu that is visually appealing and showcases your most popular and highly recommended meal options. Don’t be afraid to cross-merchandise. Just as grocery stores do (where they may pair condiments on the shelf above the salad or meat section of the store) you can ‘cross-merchandise’ your menu!
Devote a section of your menu to food/drink pairings in which you recommend a ‘chef approved’ cocktail to go with each promotional entrée. Change the font to make you highest seller pairings more noticeable, or for more expensive, exclusive ‘for a limited time’ drinks and/or entrees, turn those fancy meals into a fancy font. A little shift in the visual of your menu, and you can reap the benefits of long term, high profit growth.
Appeal to the Consuming Public
As Evander Holyfield put it, “a successful person makes adjustments,” and there aren’t many restaurant owners that would disagree with that one. Each customer—even the ones who know what they want, and what they like—are looking to you for leadership and the knowledge about food and drinks that they don’t have. The best way to give it to them? In a menu that incorporates your food AND drinks into one. An easily accessible and visually appealing all-in-one menu will allow you to increase your profits and improve customer satisfaction. It’s a win/win!