Menu engineering

Menu engineering is an interdisciplinary field of study devoted to the deliberate and strategic construction of menus. It is also commonly referred to as Menu Psychology.

In general, the term menu engineering is used within the hospitality industry (specifically in the context of restaurants), but can be applied to any industry that displays a list of product or service offerings for consumer choice. Typically the goal with menu engineering is to maximize a firm's profitability by subconsciously encouraging customers to buy what you want them to buy, and discouraging purchase of items you don't want them to buy.

Fields of study which contribute most to menu engineering include:

Perception and Attention—Visual perception is inextricably linked to how customers read a menu. Most menus are presented visually (though many restaurants verbally list daily specials), and the majority of menu engineering recommendations focus on how to increase attention by strategically arranging menu categories within the pages of the menu, and item placement within a menu category. This strategic placement of categories and items is referred to as the theory of sweet spots.

The reasoning being Sweet Spots stems from the classical effect in psychology known as the Serial position effect (aka. the rules of recency and primacy). The thought is, customers are most likely to remember the first and last things they see on a menu—hence, sweet spots on a menu should be where the customers look first and last. To date, there is no empirical evidence on the efficacy of the sweet spots on menus.

Customer perception of items offered on a menu can also be affected by subtle textual manipulations. For example, descriptive labeling of item names may produce positive effects, leading to higher customer satisfaction, and higher perceived product value. Similarly, the presence of dollar signs or other potential monetary cues may cause guests to spend less.

The primary goal of menu engineering is to encourage purchase of targeted items, presumably the most profitable items, and to discourage purchase of the least profitable items. To that end, firms must first calculate the cost of each item listed on the menu. This costing exercise should extend to all items listed on the menu, and should reflect all costs incurred to produce and serve. Optimally item costs should include: food cost (including wasted product and product loss), incremental labor (e.g., cost in in-house butchering, pastry production, or prep), condiments and packaging. Only incremental costs and efforts should be included in the item cost.

The two criteria for determining which menu items should be featured on a menu have been food cost percentage and gross profit. Food cost percentage is calculated by dividing the cost of the menu item ingredients, including surrounding dish items, e.g., salad, bread and butter, condiments, etc. by the menu price. Gross profit is calculated by subtracting the menu cost as previously defined, from the menu price. Advocates of Menu Engineering believe that gross profit trumps food cost so they tend to identify menu items with the highest gross profit, items like steaks and seafood, as the items to promote.

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