Four well designed SuperTuffMenus

What is Menu Engineering?

Introduction to the series

With SuperTuffMenus® we are printing and helping to design more menus that ever. With the help of Gregg Rapp, we’ve been learning how building a powerful menu can positively impact a guests’ experience and drive their desire to return. In addition to raising your profits!

Gregg has reams of material on how to get going, but we thought we would give you a jumpstart. Over the next few weeks we’ll be covering the menu engineering process, the design process, the power of menu descriptions and how to write your own menu descriptions to lead to higher profits. Served up in neat, palatable chunks.

Menu engineering is the study of the profitability and popularity of menu items, and how these factors influence the placement of these items on a menu.

Increasing profitability by engineering your menu

Now Gregg didn’t just pull this research out of thin air, this work originated in 1970 performed by the Boston Consultancy group to help businesses segment their products in a way that helps with decision making. The idea was brought into the world of hospitality in the 1980s by Professor ‘Coach’ Donald Smith of Michigan State University. Don’t forget that menu engineering isn’t limited to traditional paper food menus, this can be applied to drinks lists, chalkboard menus, online menus, take away menus..(you get the idea!).

It’s rare to have a menu consisting of items of equal popularity, this is how you can strategise to highlight your top sellers, upsell those that need a little love and overall increase your profits.

Why you should engineer your menu

Profit Impact

Gregg’s  work is very thorough and he often visits restaurants he has worked with once a year to see what additional profits they can squeeze out together. He’s also done his research into who is in the know about menu engineering. Here are his estimates.

60% do no menu engineering

Which segment are you in?

Next week we’ll be going through the Menu-Engineering process to really get you started in assessing your menus profitability and popularity. Feel free to read ahead with the Menu Engineer himself!

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