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.

The Carter family is one of the most important groups in the history of country and old time music. It is a popular belief that bluegrass traces back as far as Bill Monroe and farther, but it actually goes all of the way back to the music of the Carter Family, and before that goes all of the way back to Ireland. Many of the most important songs found the origin of their popularity in the renditions done by this famous country family, and so for anyone who likes country, bluegrass, or old time music, this is definitely the place to start.

As a member of the Carter family tree, I am proud to be able to trace my lineage back to this awesome and talented family. It does not really seem like it is right to take their accomplishments as my own, but still, since I have discovered that I am a member of this line, it is hard not to feel something for it. It just is really an incredible feeling to know that, while other people’s grandparents were working hard in whatever their chosen trade, mine were able to make a living and become enduring legends, off of their beautiful singing and playing. There are not too many people who can really make that claim, and I am proud to be one of the proud few who can. The Carter family are really an amazing part of American culture and in my daily life, I do my best to try to carry on their legacy in what little ways that I can. It is not always too much, but I have begun singing down at the local coffee shop, trying to make something of my own little melodies. Doing what you can, as my mother always used to say, is the most important thing.

Of course, if you have never listened to Carter family recordings, they may just sound a little bit strange to you. They are, after all, some pretty old music and so you should probably take your time to get to listen to them with older ears before passing judgment. Times have changed and that can make it hard to really listen to old music with an open ear, but I think that it is always worth trying to. You should think how much you could gain from it. It might enrich your life.