Menu Design Hacks Restaurants Use to Make You Order More

Everybody loves eating out now and then. When placing an order, the first thing that a customer looks at is the restaurant menu, which is essential when running a food service business. Generally, someone in the restaurant designs the menu and strategizes the dishes according to its theme. Some restaurants serve traditional dishes, so the menu design and theme represents the nature of the restaurant. Simultaneously, some use modern cooking techniques like liquid nitrogen, so the menu is also modern and has a refined look.

A restaurant menu is not just a list of dishes and their prices that a restaurant is serving. According to consulting companies, the menu represents the restaurants’ personality and the food they are serving. The menu usually focuses on highlighting the top-selling dishes to attract more customers.

There are different hacks that a restaurant uses to make us order more from them.

Use of technology

Technology has taken over the entire food industry. Restaurants get more revenue when they establish their identity online. The convenience offered by technology makes us less attentive to the things we purchase. Ordering food online allows restaurants to benefit from customers’ disbursal habit and results in getting more orders from a single customer. Because the ordering is easy, the consumer makes the mistake of ordering unnecessary items from the menu. Restaurants try to make it easier to order food with the touch of a fingertip, and often one does not even notice how much they are spending.

The Golden Triangle

Take a look at any restaurant’s menu. They all have a golden triangle. It comprises of

The middle zone of the menu
The upper right corner
The left corner

This is called a golden triangle. This area of the menu is expertly designed and used by many restaurants. Menu engineers put the most profitable dishes in this area.

Restaurants frequently work to improve the golden triangle of their menu to ensure profitability. The golden area of a menu can have more than one dish.

Color theme: Colors and designs are used in psychology. Color stimulates the brain and can play a part in creating and setting your mood. Successful restaurants utilize this psychology to enrich their business by designing menus with different colors to appease the senses. Here is how restaurants use color to entice customers to order more. Green color makes the customer feel fresh and reminds them of fresh green vegetables. The orange color is considered a funky color and is the color of most savory dishes. It automatically stimulates and triggers appetite and makes the customer order more than they can consume. Also, color stimulates the brain by increasing its oxygen supply. Orange is also associated with healthy food. Yellow brings satisfaction. It makes people feel happy and contended. It is an attractive color and is used in the menu to grab the customer’s attention. Red color attracts customers as it is very noticeable. The items that are listed in red color are generally ordered more than other dishes.

Mentioning price on the menu: Pricing the menu is the key to generate business in the food industry. It is essential to display pricing correctly and strategize how it is mentioned on the menu.

Putting prices in words: Some restaurants have adopted this technique. They have started mentioning price in words rather than digits because showing digits makes the price look higher. When prices are mentioned in words (for example, fifteen dollars rather than $15), the diners are likely to spend more. Another pricing strategy is to show the pricing as one or two cents less than the rounded number (for example, $9.99 instead of $10). This is psychological pricing and is a tactic that has been used by businesses for decades.

Placing items on the menu: Restaurants often use psychology when deciding where to place dishes. They place overpriced dishes on their menu despite their availability. This makes diners perceive that other items are cheaper, so they order them more. For example, a tenderloin steak is priced at $29, and other steaks are $22 (which is not less expensive itself). The diners will opt for other steaks rather than ordering the tenderloin steak.

Conclusion

While many aspects of the restaurant business are essential, psychology is heavily employed to maximize sales during the customer experience. Servers can also utilize psychology to increase sales, but the menu can boost sales by proper design, color, wording, and pricing strategies. Take all these factors into account when designing your restaurant menu.

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