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F & B
Menu matters
Menu is one of the important creation of any F&B outlet.
And, a professionally created menu is a great marketing tool, says Amit Kumar
Ghosh.
 A
menu is a list of food and beverage items that are served to customers at a
price. It is a written communication from the establishment to its customers.
A major part of an F&B outlet’s success depends on its menu - how it
is created, presented, priced, etc.
A badly designed, unprofessionally-created menu creates a bad impression on
customers. But a professionally-designed menu with various F&B items which
is rightly priced, complement the décor and ambience of the outlet. All
good hotels have experts to design the layout of a menu and guidelines to ensure
their outlet menus are standardised.
 It
must be ensured that the menu highlights the chef's specials - vegetarian
as well as non vegetarian dishes. Ensure that no two items of the
same product are listed. A menu should be compact and easy to handle
for customers. This will also ensure that they last longer. Menu
printing is a costly affair for any restaurant so proper care needs
to be taken. But damaged menus should be removed out of circulation;
damaged menus create a negative impact on the customer's mind.
Recent studies show that hotels and restaurant owners/operators have various
pricing policies which are based on their experiences. Professional approaches
like menu engineering, menu analysis and menu sales summary are not being used.
These approaches to structure a menu are being taught in catering colleges,
but are not being followed by restaurant owners. Instead, a rule of thumb, intuition
and psychological pricing policies are being followed. Also maintaining the
menu is the outlet manager's responsibility.
The following steps must be followed while creating a menu:
- Menu items should be correctly described without
any subjective word
- Prices should be written in number and not in words
- Special/signature dishes should be earmarked
- Menu items must be written as per Classical French
courses of menu
- Vegetarian and non-vegetarian items must be clearly
indicated
- Hot and mild items must be indicated
Important decisions like the font size, print style, layout,
number of pages, paper quality, etc to be decided by the authority in charge.
At all costs, avoid:
- Haphazard descriptions of F&B items
- Cardinal mistakes like giving the menu
a big shape and size
- Too many items (creates confusion)
- Not giving a clear idea about the food
items
- Spelling mistakes
- Dull design that is not eye-catching
- Wrong font size
- Foreign names which are difficult to understand
- Confusing layout
- Unavailable items (not available for more
than
reasonable time)
- Too many tent cards for promotional purposes
on the table along the menu
- No truth in the menu description
- Stickers on the price tag or manually
changed with pen
- Badly shaped, dog-eared or torn menus
- Not being cleaned everyday, resulting
in pen marks, curry spots, bread crumbs, papad pieces, etc inside the
menu
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The writer is senior faculty member at School of Hotel Management
- ITER, Bhubaneswar, Orissa
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