How Restaurants Shape Their Menus Based on the Changing Economy

I spent four years of my career working in the marketing department for a 1,000+ site quick service operator. For three of those years, a good majority of my time was spent digging into menu analysis and trying to gauge the profit impact of where products were placed on the menu board. We continuously sought to understand how people ordered based on the location of menu items and tried to quantify the impact of moving a menu item to a more, or less, visually desirable place on the menu.

One particular year, the objective was to understand whether or not to restructure the menu board layout to allow for value combos to be permanently placed on the menu. For the most part, discounted menu items were only offered through print coupons or when running a bundle promotion which typically occurred 7-8 times a year, not every day of the week. We already had 9-12 combos listed so how would adding one to three permanent discounted combos affect the menu board and more importantly, sales? Many questions had to be asked, such as –

• What is the core menu? You can’t forget the bread and butter of your business. If a PB&J sandwich was the first item you sold, don’t abandon it! Maintain loyalty to the core product that started your business.

• What are the best sellers? So you might have started with the PB&J sandwich, but now, maybe the PB&J with honey is your top seller?

• What items are you promoting (whether on TV, radio and/or print)? Take into consideration that certain menu item(s) sales performance metrics can be skewed during these windows of promotions, including the week of soft sell.

• What items do you want to up-sell? So fruit might be a popular add-on to the PB&J sandwich but chips have a lower food cost. Choose to up-sell the chips (ie. via a customer facing display) and have fruit just menu-striped on the menu.

• Will customers trade down to a less priced item if it is featured?

• What “me too” items should you have? To avoid cannibalization, you can’t just appeal to the customers that like peanut butter. Don’t rule out the customers that are allergic to nuts! It’s necessary to determine what alternative options you can offer to them.

So, why spend your time on such an in-depth menu board analysis? First, menu management is not strictly based on mathematical analytics. Outside factors and variables and customer input must be taken into consideration to determine the right business decision but analysis can help you to understand the patterns of your customers, what you’re doing well and what will help to drive more traffic in your restaurant.

After months of in-depth menu board analysis, we decided to add the value combos, but provide several options available under the umbrella of these new value combos. We ended up seeing a lift in combo sales with minimal trade down.
This was a win for us.

In hard times, menu management is more important than ever. Don’t compromise your menu, but keep an open mind to understand your environment outside of your business.

What are ways that your restaurant is shaping its menu based on the changing economy?