Create your Restaurant Menu

How to Create your Restaurant Menu

Another great marketing instrument that is generally overlooked will be your restaurant menu. As I've mentioned in my Previous Post “Creating Good Customer care Culture”, first impression is important. Preparing the menu takes a lot of work and a lot of planning. You need to do it step by step. And you can't skip any of these steps. Below are the steps.

Restaurant Concept

Firstly, you have to identify what is your restaurant concept and what type of customers that you want to attract. Look around at your area, other restaurant premises and what others are offering. You have to know whether the community are young working adults, families or college students. This will determine the style, quality and portion sizes of the food that you will feature on your restaurant menus. It would be suicidal to open a fine dining restaurant in a community of families who normally dine together.

Market Analysis Market

Market analysis is an important part in planning your menu for your restaurant. You need to know what others are selling, what the locals want. The market analysis also can help you with your menu prices so as to be inline with the income of the community in your area. Its no point to create an expensive menu for a community that are in the middle income category. You will then have an empty restaurant and a fridge full of expensive items.

Consult your Chef

In one episode of Restaurant Makeover, the Makeover Chef tells the Restaurant Chef that "Chefs create menus not owners". This is true, only the chef knows what he is good at. Its no point for the owner to come out with the menu that the chef is not able to cook it well. Firstly consult with your Chef and also review your current menu with him. Take into consideration of your top sellers and the poorest selling items. This is to identify what to remove and what to keep. Also take into consideration the local likes and what others is offering. The items in your menu may be limited to the size of your kitchen or by the equipment that you have. If you want to try something new you have to be prepared to buy the equipment that your chef needs for his menu. Also take into consideration the skill level of your staff both in the kitchen and at the front. Its no point to create a fine dining menu when the staffs are not skilled enough to prepare or sell it. Also the raw items should be readily available or you will have a menu with lots of sold out items.

Menu Pricing
Knowing the costs of your items that you plan to sell means success to your business. By carefully calculating the food cost you can determine the price that you will be selling. But saying that, you also need to be aware what your competitors are selling, so as not to overprice your items thus turning away business. That's where your market analysis comes into play. There are numerous website giving out free templates that you can use for calculating your food. One such site is Menu Costing Templates

Designing Your Menu
As mentioned in my previous post Free Restaurant Menu Templates, that a restaurant menu is an important key to promote what your chef has to offer. In the menu you will list what is available in your restaurant. Splendidly prepared menus will really entice the customer to dine within your place. I’ve learned that beside scrumptious sounding write ups, mouthwatering images will definitely appeal to customers to try something new. Sometimes I feel that the customers usually are not clear on what to order, so they normally will order the norm. Shying away from something unique or different that your chef have conjured up. Thus a picture will give the customer a visual taste of what's coming. In that post I also suggested some free templates sites so you don't have to take the trouble of designing the menu from scratch.

Proofread and print final design Go through the entire menu with a fine tooth comb as error will make you look like a fool and also once printed its costly to reprint again. You could also hire a professional editor. You can do what I normaly do, is to pass around to a few friends who are quite ok in English and ask their opinion. After all the people that is going to read your menus are normal people not restauranteurs. So if they can't understand what you are trying to drive at, how do you expect your customers. After all this is done, sent out your menu for printing. In my next post I will give you ways on promoting your restaurant menu.

 
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CLASSIC restaurant management suite was put together by Andreas Breitfuss and his team to help those people in the restaurant industry. It is a selection of restaurant management tools that when used in combination can help you streamline your restaurant, café or hotel. These pre-designed forms, templates and spreadsheets save you time to concentrate on other areas of the business. There is beverage costing sheet, restaurant requisition sheets, purchase order forms, blank stock take sheets, stock take spreadsheet, stock take financial analysis spreadsheet, wastage sheets, standard food recipe templates, standard beverage recipe. Beverage engineering spreadsheet, menu placement card, menu advertising elements and sample restaurant menus

Hatten Hotel Melaka

My Review of the Hatten Hotel in Melaka

We chose Hatten Melaka for two reasons. One was that we could bring my four year old to the Coral Wonderland Aquarium which is just across the road from the hotel. The other reason was that Mahkota Parade was just next door, so my wife could go for her shopping terapy. Check in was a breeze as we checked in on a weekday. Melaka gets really crowded on weekends and holidays, especially hotels around the the historical sites. Parking is located within the Hatton Square which will be a problem on weekends as shoppers will also park there. The hotel is huge and very busy especially at Chatterz their all day dining on level 11 during breakfast. The room we got was rather large with a lounge with a sofa and a large TV. There is also a flatscreen TV in the bedroom. There is no bathtub only a rain shower stall which is ok cause we hardly use bathtubs nowadays. We had the view of the swimming pool so my four year old couldn't wait to jump in especially when he saw the water fountain shooting out from the floor next to the kiddie pool. The swimming pool was located on the12th floor together with the Gym and Sauna. There is also a small bar at the poolside called Splash which serves beverages. There are only two food and beverage outlets at Hatten Melaka, one was their all day dining called Chatterz and the poolbar called Splash. But food shouldn't be problem as there are numerous food outlets around, either at the Mahkota Parade or Hatten Square. The only thing that some might find troublesome is that the lift from the carpark only goes to either the lobby or the 11th floor. From there on you have to change lift to go to your floor by putting your keycard into the slot. But this is a good problem in terms of our safety as non inhouse guest cannot access the floors that have rooms. Check Hotelcombined for best rates in Melaka, Malaysia

A great artitcle that I've found on the web

Here's a great article that I've found on the net about how different cultures look at customer service

A Tale Of Japanese Customer Service