
The “menu engineers” who optimize restaurant revenue - Anon84
https://thehustle.co/meet-the-menu-engineers-helping-restaurants-retool-during-the-pandemic/
======
supernova87a
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I love the (rarely-found) type of
restaurant where you enter, and they start serving you food where you have no
choice in the matter. Like some family joint in the middle of nowhere that
people go to for what they know will exactly be served, as if at home.

Of course, that's probably out the window after all this settles down. Those
types of restaurants are probably highly likely to fold.

By the way, here's a funny parody of "every trendy restaurant menu":
[https://www.eater.com/2014/7/24/6181765/heres-what-every-
tre...](https://www.eater.com/2014/7/24/6181765/heres-what-every-trendy-
restaurant-menu-looks-like)

~~~
km3r
Reminds me of this one restaurant in Paris I visited a few years back. We were
kinda off the main drag and see this place with a long line way out the door
so we decide to walk over and check it out. Saw a tasty looking steak being
served and the line seemed to be moving pretty quickly so we decided to wait
it out. We quickly realized that no one there spoke any English, and we
basically spoke no French. But we were determined nonetheless to see what it
was all about.

So we get to the front of the line and the hostess seats us. The waitress
walks up to us and quickly realized we don't know any French. So in broken
English she asks "rare or well done?". After getting all of our preferences
she quickly comes back with wine and steaks with a side of this delicious
green sauce.

We were all throughly impressed by the steak/sauce and quickness of service.
My dad made a joke that the only thing that could make this better would be
another round of steak. And low and behold a second round appears and we all
laugh at the irony. All in all a great expirence, though I still don't know
what that place was called nor what that sauce was, but it sure was tasty and
a unique & fun expirence.

~~~
vii
Single menu item steak frites restaurants are available in NYC and London and
apparently Mexico City -
[https://relaisdevenise.com/](https://relaisdevenise.com/) They import the
secret sauce from France.

These restaurants also make it easy to split the bill as everybody has the
same thing!

~~~
buran77
I just love restaurants that serve one or very few items even if they're small
bodegas or a street cart. Being presented with a 12 page menu is off putting,
and knowing a single place simply cannot serve 200 types of quality food
(ingredients, cooking methods, etc.) is a significant part of that.

With a half a page menu I simply know the cook/chef specialized in that, and
the ingredients have a better chance of being fresh and higher quality. One
great sauce is 10 times better than a full menu of random choices.

~~~
Akronymus
Speaking of small restaurant: A few years ago I was visiting Vienna with my
parents, where we strolled around the back alleys. There we found a small
bakery[1] and across from that a small "Kaffeehaus" [2]. There we were able to
literally buy some freshly baked bread/pastries from the bakery, walk 20m or
so over and have breakfast with what we bought over there.

That is something you can barely ever find anywhere. It is also one of the
reasons I try to avoid famous places and instead search out to the hidden
parts of the city.

[1] [https://www.kornradl.at/](https://www.kornradl.at/)

[2] Like 3 tables and with a giant bookshelf of interesting books.

------
overcast
Minimalist menus would be the best thing to happen to most of restaurants. My
favorite places are single page , single sided, list of perfected dishes.
Especially the ones that change it up every couple of weeks. Less is more. I
suggest anyone interested in that concept read "The Paradox of Choice". Too
many options leads people to be overwhelmed and miserable by their choices.

~~~
GuB-42
I consider lack of choice in a restaurant a good thing, and I am not the only
one.

And it is not just the paradox of choice.

Simply, if a restaurant offers 20 different dishes, it means each dish gets
20x less attention than if you had only one choice. Less fresh ingredients,
less time perfecting the recipe and preparation. Serving only one dish makes
things simpler and the restaurant is going to spend more energy making sure it
is worth it.

About choice. When I go to a restaurant, I just want to eat something good.
But I don't know what's good, it's not my specialty. But the chef is a
specialist, he knows what's good, so I want to rely on his judgment as much as
possible. Like everyone, I have personal tastes, but a good chef can easily
make me change my mind about things I don't like.

Usually, what I think is the best is a 3 choice menu:

The specialty, the one that gets the most love and ideally the one everone
should take.

The alternative, a completely different dish for those with different personal
tastes.

And another, simpler dish for the picky eater. For example, it can be vegan if
none of the other two are, free of allergens, kosher,... The idea is to not
let that person down if part of a group.

~~~
boring_twenties
My uncle told a story about some restaurant in Italy, where everyone is seated
at the same fixed time, and the owner comes out and announces:

"Tonight, dinner will be rib eye steak. It will be cooked medium rare. If that
doesn't sound good to you, please feel free to leave now."

~~~
fingerlocks
These exist in the US too. My favorite in Seattle is called _Archipelago_ ,
the chef tells a story about each dish when serving them.

------
dugmartin
The reverse z order mentioned in the article confirms what a friend of my wife
who ran marketing for a regional chain said: the top right item on the first
page will be the highest margin dish, normally pasta.

For years I would look and she was almost always right.

~~~
mycall
Is this true in Japan or China where reading direction changes?

~~~
duskwuff
Japan and China both read left-to-right, just like we do. While some
traditional texts are written vertically with lines proceeding right-to-left,
that doesn't really carry over to general UI conventions. A set of three
horizontal images would typically be understood as proceeding from left to
right, for instance.

Arabic and Hebrew, on the other hand, are primarily RTL, and this _does_ carry
over to UI conventions. Menus might be laid out differently there.

~~~
limteary
Is the manga being right to left the outlier then these days?

~~~
cuddlybacon
EDIT: huh, I opened a couple manga I had nearby and my original post was dead
wrong

~~~
resoluteteeth
> Text within speech bubbles is generally left to right.

This isn't true in Japanese which is what limteary was asking about.

~~~
duskwuff
_Horizontal_ text in modern Japanese is virtually always written left to
right.

The primary exception is where the context of the writing itself implies a
direction, e.g. text on the passenger side of a bus, or on a directional sign
pointing to the left, may be written right-to-left so that the text "flows" in
the same direction as its container. This would never be used for a longer
text, though.

------
chadash
> _The underlying reasons for this are financial: Restaurants can’t bother
> with low-margin dishes. They have fewer employees on the payroll, so they
> want to be more efficient with a smaller set of meals. They’re prioritizing
> fewer — and cheaper — ingredients._

I’m sure they are thinking about margins, but more generally, I think the
issue is probably one of volume. If you have 25% as many people, maybe you
remove unpopular items from the menu so that you aren’t ordering ingredients
for them. For example, I have no idea whether oysters are high margin or not,
but I suspect that people aren’t ordering them much for take out, so it
doesn’t make sense to have them on the menu.

~~~
coredog64
To expand on this a bit, multiple people in the business have told me that you
can’t really buy much that only goes into one entree. So if you’re buying
breaded chicken, it’s the same thing for your salads, your sandwiches/wraps,
and any plated item. If one menu item isn’t moving, you can use your inventory
on the others.

Obviously there are exceptions: Burger joints don’t need to do this with
hamburger patties. Or you may buy a limited quantity of something you’re 100%
sure is going to sell.

------
adatavizguy
I wonder if the Cheesecake Factory and Applebees use A/B testing with their
menus the same way Netflix uses A/B testing? There is probably a huge demand
for data driven decision making for restaurants rather than these spares
studies mentioned in the article which most likely are anecdotal. Simply have
four different menus with the same items and look at the analytics provided by
point of sale system. That is a fun start - up idea.

Most of your favorite restaurants in places like San Francisco, Portland, and
New York City engineer their menu by removing least popular menu items once a
month or once a season and replace them with what they think their customers
currently demand at a price to insure that the restaurant is running at the
point of highest efficiency. There are other considerations such a cost of
product but most restaurants increase overall demand by using analytics from
the point of sale system and the most profitable dishes are not always the
most popular. Engineering a kitchen -- and dining room for that matter -- to
be efficient without cooks tripping over each other is another whole
discussion nonetheless even this ties into what can be added to the menu.

The two biggest mistakes an independent restaurant can make is hard coding a
menu and putting the word in Bistro or Basserie in the restaurant name -- the
restaurant can't evolve after that. Have any of you been to La Folie on Polk
and Green in Russian Hill? That restaurant first opened as a casual French
Bistro but the demand was for their caviar by the ounce and Tournedos Rossini
which oddly enough was not only their most popular menu item but also not on
the menu. So in the mid nineties the average customer was spending $150 - $300
instead of $40 per person.

~~~
alexpotato
> I wonder if the Cheesecake Factory and Applebees use A/B testing with their
> menus the same way Netflix uses A/B testing?

This article from Atul Gawande would lead me to believe that they(Cheesecake
Factory) have probably tried it:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-
med](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-med)

They even have revenue forecasting models that take into account: weather,
time of year, holidays etc and that article is from 2012.

PS I highly recommend that article for both the medicine to restaurant
comparisons and the parallels one can draw to complicated systems in general
like IT.

------
apacheCamel
I just got back from a trip to Las Vegas and every single restaurant we went
to had a QR code + online menu. Now, I am not sure if it was related to the
reasoning stated here, but all the menus were also very short, with only a few
items each. Personally, I was quite happy to view the menu on my phone. I know
for a fact though my parents and grandparents would have hated such a thing.

~~~
devmunchies
What's the QR code for? The site generates a QR code after you order for you
to scan when picking up the food?

~~~
maccard
There's a qr code on the door or the table with a link to the menu that you
view on your phone!

------
mrmonkeyman
The QR shit is annoying. I'm young, but having to keep picking up our phones
to look at menus and getting distracted by them is exactly why I go to a
restaurant in the first place: human experience. Purely _consuming_ food can
be done at home.

Also, my wife's phone was low on battery so we were on a clock. This sucked.
They had batteries but no cables for an Android phone.

------
rhacker
It's not a bad idea. I mean, you still see these long lines at In'n Out, and
it's funny because they're all buying the exact same item. We'll there's maybe
2 possible main courses, but by and large it's people buying different
toppings of a cheeseburger and fries.

That business model probably did well for McDonalds when they first opened
their doors. All of these restaurants have that identity too.

Wendy's - Square Burgers

Carl's Jr. Double Western Bacon

IHop - Stack of cakes

I mean it's very reasonable for most restaurants to take this time to go back
to identity restaurants instead of catering to the picky people, which, let's
be honest, are the ones that stopped eating out when Covid hit.

------
vmception
In San Francisco everywhere has QR codes and the same format.

I've had wine and charcuterie: food and separate drink menu on two different
QR codes.

It's not perfect, many times the checkout system is haphazard, doesn't make
use of Apple Pay or anything built into the phone. Requires user to input
their table number into the checkout process.

------
kevindong
> Enlisting the magic number for items per food category. At fast-food joints,
> it’s 6; for snazzier joints, it’s 7 appetizers/desserts and 10 main courses.

My first gut reaction to those stated prices was that the consultants hadn't
adjusted their prices for inflation for at least a decade.

But then I looked at the (current menu) prices of the restaurants I went to in
college and also my hometown (both in low-cost parts of the Midwest). It was
only then that I realized NYC has made me accustomed to much higher prices.

Those numbers are substantially accurate in my college town and hometown.
Meanwhile those numbers need to be adjusted upwards by 50-100% for NYC.

EDIT: My skimming of the article was poor; the quote refers to number of items
per category not price per item per category. My anecdote remains true though.

~~~
tssva
Those are prices. Those are the number of items available in each category.

~~~
tssva
Typo in my comment. Should be, "Those aren't prices".

------
jinushaun
This article perfectly describes the types of menu that I loath to see at
restaurants. It’s not an exaggeration when I say I always complain about these
menus in person whenever I encounter them because I find them so hard to read.
But question is… do these gimmicks subconsciously still work on me?

------
cik2e
I am loving the QR menus, especially ones that offer check out. For one thing,
I almost always feel compelled to go wash my hands after ordering, since menus
are known to be some of the most germ ridden things out there. Besides that
though, restaurants could do some many cool things with this. For example, it
would be trivial to offer photos of every dish. The next level could be item-
item recommendations (people who order X, also like Y).

~~~
jt2190
My wife always insists that we not handle any of our cutlery until we’re
finished handling the menu and we’ve either used hand sanitizer or washed our
hands. [1]

Unfortunately, mobile phones are also notoriously dirty [2], so we still wash
after handling those as well.

[1] “Slideshow: The Germiest things in restaurants: #2 Menus“
[https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-
poisoning/ss/slidesh...](https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-
poisoning/ss/slideshow-germy-restaurant)

[2] “ Nasty Bugs Lurking on Your Cell Phone” [https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-
guides/news/20111014/nasty-bugs...](https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-
guides/news/20111014/nasty-bugs-lurking-on-your-cell-phone)

------
phonypc
This mostly rings hollow based on my experience as a diner and chef. The menu
graphics especially; I read boxes last if at all, the most expensive item at
every place I've worked sells quite well, unusual ingredients and dishes don't
sell well, and why on Earth would I read the _right_ side of a folding menu
first?

------
aaron695
All these stories about "menu engineers", and probably this new profession
seem to come from

Menu Mind Games (2009)

[https://nymag.com/restaurants/features/62498/](https://nymag.com/restaurants/features/62498/)

------
joshuaheard
Making menus smaller is a good idea in general. Every restaurant rescue show I
watch recommends this. However, there's a better idea for more profitability:
make portions smaller.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Only if its a problem. There is an Asian resturant I go to which has 7 pages
of menu and everything I have picked has been superb.

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cascom
I was at a restaurant in Houston and they ordered the dishes in each section
by size (I.e. the appetizers started with the smallest dish and worked their
way up in size)

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user5994461
One thing I do not miss since not going to restaurant, not having to pick
between ten items on the menu and trying to figure out how much the service
charge will be.

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cascom
The unfortunate fact is that if you’re a restaurant owner (putting aside ultra
high-end for the moment) if you want to increase revenue, you can either turn
tables faster or increase the check size, if you raise prices people either
want higher quality or better value - quality tends to be lower margin, so
restaurants usually opt for value (bigger portions)...which is not the best
for our waistlines

------
rawoke083600
The "change" I want to see in the world of menus is this: List desserts in
order of size ! Biggest to smallest. Usually desserts are such a rip-off at
restaurants, but when I do indulge, I want the biggest :)

------
unreal37
> Restaurants are investing heavily in QR codes.

Investing heavily in them? What does that even mean? QR codes are free. I
haven't seen one relating to restaurants menu items, in my life.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
It feels to me like QR codes for public use have completely died. They
exploded about 5 years ago while people would just scan marketing posters for
the gimmick of scanning a qr code but I doubt anyone does that anymore.

~~~
EE84M3i
A lot of people in the US don't even know how to scan a QR code, and for the
longest time (maybe still now?) the most popular mobile phone OSes didn't come
with a built-in scanner.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
From what I can tell, Android can't by default and iOS can but I think its
disabled by default.

~~~
astura
My pixel can scan qr codes by default through the camera

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Ah interesting. I used a pixel for a while and I never knew that was a feature
so I assume most users don't either.

------
leetrout
Three chain menus I hate:

Cheesecake Factory

Bonefish

Maggianos (really, a pocket pull out?)

~~~
duskwuff
Cheesecake Factory's menu is a monument to excess. It's ridiculous.

But, then again, so is the rest of the restaurant.

~~~
InitialLastName
TFA calls out Cheesecake Factory's menu directly: the goal is for patrons to
get confused, ask the server what to get, and let the server direct them to
more expensive/higher margin options.

------
wombatmobile
Under "capitalism", the aim of menu design is to maximise profits for the
restaurant owner.

Imagine a system that maximises the health and happiness of patrons, the
enjoyment and satisfaction of work by employees, and the sustainability of the
business.

The people who build it will need more than menu design.

------
woshea901
I need this for my saas business!

------
29athrowaway
Having a separate menu for alcohol will be appreciated by dealing with
alcoholism.

I do not suffer from alcoholism but I have met people dealing with it.

------
seumars
Embarrassing reading. I find it hard to believe there's a "science" to menu
design that has its own "experts" who don't mention a thing about typography
or graphic design. The Z pattern is simply related to the language the menu is
set, which for languages of latin origin (and obviously many others) is left-
to-right, top-to-bottom. Adding boxes for attention does the opposite most of
the time because people will read text in that same fashion. Meaning that if
you place a box between two text blocks, it's easier to jump over the box and
continue reading the block below than having to find the (now indented) first
line inside the box and then having to find the first line of the block below
once again. The box breaks the pattern your eyes have been following up to
that point. And on, and on, and on...

