The 9 Simple Steps to Create Your Menu
Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash
This is part of blog series on how to start your own food business, including a starter kit - click here for the original post.
Whether you’re a food entrepreneur starting up your new concept (read the full startup guide here), or a restauranteur looking to revamp your menu, these 9 simple steps will help guide you through your menu design process.
1. Select your best menu items
There is no need to appease every single person. Keep your menu simple by selecting only the items that your customers love!
So what should you include? This depends on 3 main factors:
(1) What do you make really well that will keep people coming back for more?
(2) What are your customers telling you they want based on what they’ve tried?
(3) What kind of profit does each menu item generate?
(1) and (2) are straightforward, and for (3) you can use Sous Chef’s recipe manager to determine your food and labor costs, as well as the appropriate price to charge to make a profit.
2. Price your menu items
Set your menu prices to cover your costs of ingredients, labor, and include a margin that will ensure that you turn a profit in your business. You can use Sous Chef’s recipe manager to cost out your recipes’ ingredients and labor. In general, your ingredient cost should be about 30% of the sales price, and your labor cost should be no more than about 30% of the sales price. These are rough estimates to use as guidelines and each dish will vary depending on dish popularity, competitor pricing, and availability.
example recipe in Sous Chef’s recipe manager
3. Organize menu items by categories
Create categories for your menu items and group them together to make it easy to navigate the menu. For example: appetizers, salads, mains, desserts, etc.
4. Highlight allergens and dietary accommodations
To make it easy for your customers to order, be sure to label any menu items that may contain allergens and dietary accommodations. To do this you should review all ingredients in your menu items. Look for ingredients that contain gluten, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish/shellfish, or nightshades. Also be on the lookout for menu items that are vegan, vegetarian, kosher, or halal.
Icons Vectors by Vecteezy
5. Name and description design
Use descriptive language to name and describe your dishes, including flavors and textures such as “savory” or “crisp”. A Cornell study found descriptive menu labels increase sales and improve customer satisfaction with the food and restaurant.
A different study found that avoiding the dollar sign ($) on menus and only using numbers for prices increases the amount customers will spend.
Finally, if relevant, highlight local farms and suppliers to provide a sense of community and transparency in your menu.
6. Photos (optional)
Adding photos to your menu could provide an additional layer of visual stimulus to help inform your customers’ ordering decision; however, be careful not to overcrowd the menu with text or photos. Furthermore, only use high-quality photos that highlight your best dishes.
If you’re going to take your own photos, you may want to consider investing in a very basic light-box (like this) to get nice crisp photos of your best menu item(s) and place them strategically on your menu.
7. Choose a suitable design
Select colors, fonts, and an overall design that matches your cuisine and style. Remember that simple is better so the menu does not confuse your customers. It’s ok to have plenty of whitespace if used correctly.
If you’re not a design wizard, don’t worry. There are tons of online options of preset menu designs available for use, such as Canva templates here.
screenshot from Canva website
8. Order and payment options
If you don’t have a physical store or restaurant, you may want to include a small section about how customers can order and pay for your products. If you have a website, direct them there, or just take orders by email. Depending on your business, there are multiple payment options, here’s a shortlist to get started.
9. Proofread the final draft
Once you’ve assembled your final draft, make sure to have a friend or professional proofread the whole thing. The last thing you want to do is put a bunch of time and effort into something that doesn’t make sense to the customer.
Free menu review
Would you like the Sous Chef team to review your draft menu, for free? Click here to email us your menu in whatever form you have and we’ll provide a free consultation.
Up next: your P&L statement
Once you’ve finalized your menu and sent it out to customers, you may want to spend some time on the business side of things, specifically the Profit & Loss (P&L) Statement. How much will you actually make based on sales estimates?
If you take the time to create a basic P&L Statement, you’ll be far ahead of the pack towards a sustainable business. Read on here.