Unique Serving Platter

As a restaurant owner, you must give value to keep current customers and gain new ones. Competition in the restaurant business is stiff. Learn how you can profit from a new menu design. A good menu design can boost sales by ten to twenty percent in one month! Assess your customer base. Are you in tune with their lifestyle and what attracts them to visit your restaurant? Restaurant dining is theater, after all, and menu design is an important aspect of the diners’ experience.

Take a critical look at your current menu design. Perhaps you’ve felt comfortable with it, but the design is dated. Give it a face lift with a new menu design. Monitor food trends to keep your menu “fresh”. For example, fatty foods are out, heart healthy is in, “energy” drinks are popular and juice smoothies are healthy and appealing across age markets. Target your market and consider changes to your menu that will bring new customers.

The visual impact of your menu design is more important than you may realize. The 8 ½ x 11 format in a menu folder lends weight to the presentation. The cover should contain your logo or a graphic fitting your theme, centered with the name of your restaurant above and your address, hours and phone below. If you offer online ordering, include that information as well. A picture of a menu item, positioned to the right on a right hand page draws the eye of the customer, and produces more sales for that item. You’d do well to picture some of your best and high profit dishes. Use the small insert sleeves to advertise your daily specials or soup of the day. The sleeve sets the item apart and also makes it seem, well, special.

Choose fonts and colors to suit your restaurants’ style. Think of your menu as a picture book of your restaurant. When you convey quality in your menu design, your customer perceives value and has a positive expectation even before the food arrives. Good copy in your food descriptions can make your customers salivate because it sounds so good. Again, increased sales are yours. Take a simple hamburger. Read two descriptions:

Bacon Burger: served with lettuce, tomatoes and onion. Your choice of fries or coleslaw.

Our Famous Bacon Burger: Grilled and piled high with bacon, Spanish onions, cheddar, garden tomatoes and crisp lettuce. Our own barbecue sauce dresses the bun, fit for a king. Choose fries or coleslaw.

Of course, your food has to measure up, but you can see that copy matters.

Order a “take one” downsized tri-fold duplicate of your new menu design. Place near the register and entry. This is low cost advertising and keeps you in your customers mind after they’ve gone home. There are design firms specializing in menu design. When you’ve sketched out your new look, give one of these pros a call. A thoughtfully designed menu pays.

One of the nicest presents we received for our wedding shower was an electric ice cream maker. I never thought that I would really appreciate an item like this, especially since I’m not really interested in cooking very much. I’m also not crazy about making a big mess in the kitchen. But I am glad to report that the electric ice cream maker is the perfect gift for someone like me.

The reason that the present is ideal is two fold. First of all, I’m a big fan of ice cream in general. I love to try new flavors and recipes. The electric ice cream maker gives me the opportunity to try new and unusual ingredients in my recipes. I can also make up some new ideas on my own that usually come out pretty great.

Aside from being an ice cream fan, I am also a fan of modern amenities that make life easy. The electric ice cream maker is a real treat for someone who wants great results with little effort. The process is ridiculously simple and anyone can do it. I have an easier time running my electric ice cream maker than I do my toaster.

The ease of use is a great benefit for anyone who has kids. I threw a party for my niece that involved the kids participating in making their own frozen desserts for the occasion. The electric ice cream maker is so easy to use and it works so quickly that we were able to make enough for everyone by the end of the event.

I also like that clean up is pretty simple, but I’m not going to tell you that it is easy. You would expect an electric ice cream maker to create a headache of a mess to pick up but the machine doesn’t. But it isn’t perfectly simple, either. You do have a little bit of work ahead of you when you use the electric ice cream maker, but it’s not nearly as bad as you would expect.

Now that I am getting better at using the electric ice cream maker I’m ready to start collecting some of my original recipes for a book. Of course, I’ll only choose the ones that are really outstanding and there are plenty. Who would have thought that a simple item like an electric ice cream maker could turn a person like me into someone who loves to spend time in the kitchen?