Festive drinks

Delicious drinks are a key component of any good celebration and Cinco de Mayo is no exception. Consider curating a special drink menu for this day that showcases Mexican-inspired cocktails, beers, and beverages. Featured drinks can include:

Margarita–Put your bartenders’ creativity to the test and develop your very own Cinco de Mayo house margarita. It can be infused with extra spice, flavor, or a completely unexpected twist.

Paloma–A tequila cocktail that’s packed with zesty lime juice, grapefruit juice, and sparkling water, this concoction makes for a delightfully refreshing drink.

Michelada–This Mexican beer and Clamato cocktail can be made a dozen ways, so make sure your restaurant’s variation is unique, delicious, and a reflection of your brand’s personality.

Tequila–Offer a variety of Mexican tequilas that range in price and taste to satisfy a wide variety of budgets and palates.

Mexican Mule-A twist on the traditional “Moscow Mule,” a Mexican Mule includes tequila, ginger beer, and lime juice—it’s always a crowd favorite.

Other alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages restaurants can serve on Cinco de Mayo may include Horchata, Bloody Maria, Agua de Jamaica, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and Mexican beer. Don’t be afraid to create ownable cocktails and drinks that spotlight Mexican ingredients and flavors to impress your guests with unique beverage options they won’t find anywhere else.

Delicious dishes

Of course, no Cinco de Mayo celebration would be complete without an extensive and mouthwatering Mexican food menu. When planning your menu, it’s a good idea to choose items that have ingredient crossover to save on cost and reduce food waste. Below are a few Mexican staple dishes that your chef can put their own unique and festive spin on.

Appetizers

• Homemade guacamole/salsa/Pico de Gallo with chips
• Shrimp ceviche
• Empanadas
• Elote
• Crispy tostadas

Main dishes

• Chicken tamales
• Mole poblano
• Skirt steak tacos
• Pork posole
• Carnitas with Mexican rice and refried beans
• Tortas
• Fajitas

Desserts

• Homemade churro
• Caramel flan
• Tres Leches cake

Outdoor space

Due to constantly shifting COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines, utilizing your restaurant’s outdoor areas is a smart idea. If you have an outdoor patio, rooftop, or sidewalk seating, consider reworking this space for a Cinco de Mayo celebration. This can include renting tents or heaters, depending on the climate in your area. It’s important that your restaurant adheres to state and local guidelines surrounding coronavirus and outdoor dining regulations. If a viable option, you can offer ticketed timeslots that people can sign up for on your website. Limiting party sizes and how long guests are able to reserve a table for will allow the maximum amount of people possible to enjoy your restaurant in a safe way. By having predetermined reservations and time limits in place, guests will understand the expectations and feel safer knowing that your restaurant is following social distancing protocols.

Take-home kits

One strategy that’s seen success throughout the pandemic is take-home meal kits and drink kits. An ideal solution for people who are not quite comfortable dining out yet, your restaurant can assemble take-home Cinco de Mayo kits. This way, your customers can enjoy your restaurant’s menu and celebrate from the comfort of their own home. Your Cinco de Mayo meal kits can feature traditional Mexican dishes (like the ones we previously listed) as premade, ready-to-eat dishes or you can instead include the portioned ingredients so everyone can cook together. Similarly, your restaurant can test offering to-go drink kits. These can have all the necessary, pre-portioned ingredients and garnishes for popular Cinco de Mayo cocktails. It’s a good idea to choose the top three cocktails that typically sell the best on this day to include in your take-home drink kit options this year.

Social media

Now it’s time to let everyone know about your restaurant’s Cinco de Mayo celebration options by posting on your website and social media pages. Include a link to book reservations and disclose any COVID-19 guidelines/restrictions that are required for guests. Consistently post about your Cinco de Mayo offerings a few weeks before the day to give people enough time to plan and possibly order meal kits ahead of time. It’s a good idea to feature professional quality photography of your Mexican food and drink items to encourage social media engagement. You can also promote your to-go Cinco de Mayo meal kit and drink kit options with a link to the ordering page. Overall, it’s important to let your customers, both current and prospective, know exactly how they can safely celebrate Cinco de Mayo with your restaurant this year during COVID-19.

Be sure to regularly visit our free resource section dedicated to advising restaurants on how to navigate the changing rules and regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post Cinco de Mayo promotion ideas during covid appeared first on Rewards Network.

Here are a few tips on how to research and successfully incorporate new culinary trends into your restaurant’s menu.

Follow the Pulse of the Industry

Keeping up with the latest food and beverage fads can be a snap if you know where to look. Social media and industry blogs are a great resource to observe what’s trending in real time. Follow key social media players nationwide, as well as restaurants in your area, to see what the competition is serving up. With 77 percent of the U.S. population active on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great mediums to gauge customer feedback on specific flavors, dishes, and trends — and to see which trends diners have grown tired of.

Set up hashtag searches on these platforms that relate to your brand, cuisine type, and location to receive notifications when your customers or competitors use these keywords. Do you notice a spike of vegan/vegetarian hashtags in your area leading up to the New Year, or an abundant mention of “best patio” references and questions during the summertime months? Take note and be ready to adapt and capitalize on what these customers are saying they value in a restaurant experience. You can also set up Google Alerts for defined keywords like, “restaurant trends” and “trending ingredients in restaurants,” so that you’re immediately pinged when relevant content is posted.

Test Drive Your Ideas

After you decide on the food/drink trends you think will be a hit with your customers, give them a trial run before officially adding them to your menu. Fashioning a pop-up version of your restaurant at a local community festival is an ideal way to analyze locals’ reactions to your new menu ideas without making a full commitment. Be sure to engage and interact with your patrons to get an accurate picture of what they like or dislike about your newest offerings.

If a pop-up isn’t a viable option, test your new products out at your restaurant as a limited-time special. Make sure your servers are highlighting these new offerings to guests, and letting them know that they are something you are testing out. The chance to be among the first to try something can be a big driver in a customer’s decision to sample the items you’re auditioning for your menu.

Ask, Listen, and Take Notes

Always keep the lines of communication open with your diners whether it’s face-to-face or via social media. Guests’ online behavior and commentary will often tell you exactly what new trends they expect to see at a restaurant, and what motivates them to frequent a specific venue.

Many restaurant owners have also found success crowdsourcing new menu item ideas on social media. This can make customers feel connected to a restaurant, and that their feedback is heard and valued.

Keep Them Guessing and Coming Back for More

You should be updating your tried-and-true menu with seasonal additions a few times a year and adding completely new staple items at least every 18 months. A recent report shows that 31 percent of restaurants update their menu on a monthly basis, while 24 percent change it up seasonally.

This revamp provides a fresh feel for your loyal fan base, while serving as an effective way to attract new patrons too.

Get Hungry for the Facts

Americans are spending 48 percent of their total food budget dining out at restaurants. This means it’s crucial for you to determine what your big money-making food and drink items are going to be from season to season, or even month to month, so you can optimize them to generate even more revenue.

Take a look at your POS system reports and break out which products are bringing in the most cash during specific times of the year. Use this data to outline a picture of what your guests like and dislike and what time of year they prefer to order specific menu items.

Let’s say you find that your three-bean chili sales are through the roof November to January, but practically nonexistent during the spring and summer months. Try adding another hearty soup or stew product to your menu for the winter, but then 86 them for the warmer months, replacing soups and stews with fresh, lighter fare.

By staying ahead of the trends, you will be ready to offer what your customers want when they want it (or even before they know they want it), leading to repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth. Who knows, your new menu items could even become the next big hit among foodies on Instagram.

Do you want more tips on how to update your menu? Download our free e-book “Menu Magic: How You Can Increase Restaurant Sales” today!

The post Tips for Successfully Adopting Menu Trends appeared first on Rewards Network.

Set yourself apart from the rest.

Let’s say you and a rival business are next door to each other and both sell pizzas.

Rival description: Margarita – Thin base, cheese, stuffed crust.

Your description: Margarita – A crispy stone-baked base is the foundation for velvety tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese, topped with sharp notes of basil leaf.

Which restaurant are you going to choose?
Don’t forget to check your grammar to make sure it’s correct for your readers. You can use blogs like Grammarix and Boom Essays to help you improve your skills and double check your work.

Break down the description.

When writing your menu descriptions, break the task down into three separate sections that make it easy to write, while ensuring you don’t forget any important details.
The three sections are: the name of the dish, the main ingredients, and the ‘sell copy’. Of course, the two first sections are vital, with the sell copy being that extra description that’s going to make people want to choose it. Your list of ingredients and sell copy can be combined, as we saw in the first example above.
Note that because you’re now likely printing more words on your menu, there’s statistically more chance that you’ll make a spelling or grammar error. Before publishing your menu content, use editing and proofreading services like UK Writings or Paper Fellows to perfect your descriptions.

Use words instead of images.

A lot of menus will incorporate images instead of a description, but this can cause many problems, especially in smaller restaurants. You’re setting an example of what the dish should look like, which then sets an expectation in the customer’ mind. In the case where the dish doesn’t look exactly like the image, many customers will automatically be put off by it — no matter how it tastes.
In other cases, using photos can also simply make your menu look tacky if you’re not careful. If you’re going to use images, use them sparingly. The goal is to look professional and inviting. Don’t ever eliminate text descriptions entirely. You can use tools like Easy Word Count to ensure your descriptions aren’t too long. 15-30 words (max) is a great place to start.

Describe the taste.

Some items and ingredients present on your menu are going to be a bit obscure, especially to some people who are unfamiliar with your style of cuisine and won’t want to risk spending money on something that they’re not going to like.
However, you can use your menu description to describe the taste of these ingredients, making it far more likely that people are going to try it — or at least understand what it tastes like. This means using words like: hot, spicy, earthy, crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth, sweet, salty, dry, and other descriptive words.
For example, for a lasagna dish, you could write something like:

A rich and creamy whole-wheat pasta dish filled layer by layer with refreshingly fresh onions and garlic, lathered in a succulent sauce and topped with imported, premium quality mozzarella.

Although this example includes many examples of descriptive words that you could use, doesn’t it just get your mouth watering and ready to try it now? If you’re short on ideas for descriptive words, try using a professional copywriting service like State of Writing or Essay Roo to help — or just a good old-fashioned Thesaurus.

Don’t force it.

While many customers may be enticed by your menu descriptions, remember that some people are already going to be aware of what they want, and won’t want to traverse a difficult-to-read menu trying to find it.
This means avoiding menu names like ‘My Mystery Dish’ or ‘Today’s Special’. Leave at least a hint in the name for the people who don’t want to read the description, like ‘Today’s Special Pizza’, or ‘Mama’s Traditional Cottage Pie’.
There are many benefits to adding compelling menu descriptions to your restaurant’s existing menu and many ways to implement them. Just remember, in everything you write, put your customer’s experience first to ensure that your descriptions will be a success.
Want more tips on how to make your menu work harder for you? Download our free ebook “How to Use Menu Design to Increase Your Restaurant Sales” today!

Gloria Kopp is a business and a marketing consultant at Australian Help. She works as a part-time content manager at Oxessays and is a writer at Studydemic review writing blog.

The post 5 Essential Tips for Writing Mouth-Watering Menu Descriptions appeared first on Rewards Network.

WHY are people snacking more?

Pundits may be quick to assume that American eating habits and the trend toward obesity is what’s driving an increase in snack purchases at restaurants. But the data doesn’t really back up that claim, as visits to restaurants for snacking occasions jumped 3% in 2016, according to research firm The NPD Group. During that same time period, restaurant lunch traffic dropped 2%. Snack traffic isn’t necessarily additive.
The rise in restaurant snack purchases “is not about gluttony, rather it is about adapting our eating schedules to our busy lives,” states the Watrose Food & Drink Report for 2017-18.
NPD Group places the blame for lower lunch traffic on the increasing trend of employees working from home — which has risen by 24% in the past decade. Consumers who formerly would step out for an hour lunch or to pick up something on the go are now changing their behavior: eating what’s available at home, ordering delivery, or just as often, shifting their eating habits around their work habits.
If a freelancer spends any portion of their week working remotely from restaurants or cafes, that dining occasion very likely doesn’t fall neatly into the lunch category. While diminishing revenue is a possibility with lunch traffic down — particularly if your establishment invests more staff and resources in those particular hours than would otherwise — the potential to pick up the same business at other times is there.

WHEN can you expect more business?

Believe it or not, nearly half of foodservice snack visits occur during the lunch timeframe. Morning snacks represent 23 percent of overall foodservice snack visits and evening 30 percent. In other words, it’s possible that some part of your lunch traffic is staying, but possibly ordering lighter fare or incurring smaller spend per visit. But a full half of so-called “fourth meal” visits are dispersed into other hours of the day.
Depending on your business model, this diversification of dining occasion could be a strain on your kitchen and front of house staff if your menu isn’t designed with restaurant snacks in mind. But in order to fully understand how to make accommodations that keep your resources appropriately balanced, you’ve got to know what kind of diner you’re likely to see make this shift.

WHO is the target audience for restaurant snacks?

It may feel like listening to a broken record, but once again, Millennials are showing new behavior that will likely drive changes in the industry for years to come. These consumers in their early twenties to late thirties are more likely than any other generation to snack four times a day, with 25 percent actually doing so.
Why? Some of it involves working conditions, with freelance positions dominating the Millennial jobscape, particularly in the younger half of the group. Quite simply, snack menus are cost-effective options that also work with a freelancer’s flexible schedule. They’re easy to grab on the go and don’t hit their pocket book as hard for professionals at an earlier stage in their careers.
The age demographics of the Millennial also tend to make them more comfortable with dining alone than older generations. A shorter dining experience is now preferred, with diners opting to dine for sustenance rather than eating for the sake of eating. That said, Millennials want more for their money than just food. They want their dining experience — even a shorter, more fundamental one — to be customized to their concerns and aimed directly at them.
Designing your menu options to specifically offer restaurant snacks is the best way to give Millennials exactly what they’re looking for — and drive up sales for your business.

WHAT are restaurants doing already to respond?

Taking aim at capturing consumers when they want to spend on-the-go or in-between traditional meals, quick serve heavyweights like McDonald’s and Taco Bell are both reconfiguring their value menus. McDonald’s had cancelled its dollar menu in 2012, now bringing it back with items at the $1, $2, and $3 price point to expand the number of items that might be attractive to a snacking audience. Taco Bell is similarly growing its dollar menu, although maintaining the $1 price point to facilitate mixing and matching of items.
“It could be a situation where someone goes in thinking about buying one thing and then gets thinking, ‘This is pretty reasonable,’ and going to add on a few things,” explains R.J. Hottovy, restaurant analyst at Morningstar, an investment research firm.
But snack-sized pricing isn’t limited to quick serve and fast casual chains, as chefs nationwide are beginning to think about the necessity of branching out to more dining occasions than just the traditional three. With almost 90 percent of consumers reporting in Datassential’s 2017 MenuTrends Keynote Report that they have snacked on seafood, the door opens wide to many possible applications beyond just popcorn shrimp.
Pokeatery in San Mateo and Castro Valley, CA, has recently added Pokecado Toast to its menu, blending avocado (humorously, now infamous as a Millennial favorite) and poke (one of 2018’s growing trends) as a snack option. Similarly high-end, Camperdown Elm in Brooklyn, NY, has added SMAK as a snack to their menu. The pâté is made with smoked mackerel, amberjack and kingfish, and served with housemade squid-ink crackers and sesame seed.
Other restaurants are centering their entire operation on this phenomenon, like Snack Boys Snack Bar in Walker’s Point, WI. Set to open this month, Snack Boys grows out of the fine dining tradition with both chefs focusing on small plate delicacies that can attract the more-frequent-than-ever diner. The menu is designed like an entire appetizer list, with dishes like duck nuggets, breaded and fried and served with foie barbecue sauce.
On the flipslide, earlier this year Cheetos (yes, the snack brand itself) opened a temporary pop-up with chef Anne Burrell at the helm called The Spotted Cheetah in downtown Manhattan. Offering a three-course sit down meal that uses snack items as a basis for a dinner-time experience, Burrell focused not on timing, but our fascination with the culture of snacks to offer a fine dining limited time event.

HOW can you take advantage of restaurant snacks?

Ultimately, it may not be as important what you offer snackers as how. In fact, many consumers taking advantage of the snacking phenomenon are ordering the same menu items your restaurant likely offers at lunchtime. For instance, the most popular menu items for afternoon restaurant snacks in 2016 were: burger, chicken sandwiches, cookies, potato chips, French fries, and candy, according to the NPD Group. A lot of these items you probably already offer.
By resizing entree offerings — or even simply repositioning your existing items — in a menu section highlighting smaller portions, restaurants can take advantage of this growing consumer trend, and capture the dollars consumers are looking to spend. But make sure you are truly thinking about the experience your customer needs to go along with the food.
If you don’t want to make the big leap with your regular menu, try out a limited time offer (LTO). Not only will you be able to assess interest in snack-size plates among your patrons, but the nature of the LTO will drive urgency and should increase interest where it might not otherwise have bloomed.
Are snackers dining in or taking out? Do they need faster service that will require your kitchen to fulfill their order more efficiently? Are you set up during off-hours to offer more convenient, express service to your diners?
57% of consumers say portability is an important factor when choosing restaurant snacks, according to survey firm Technomic. Is your food able to be packaged so that it stays warm and in the same condition from leaving your restaurant to arriving on the customer’s plate at home? Will it taste the same as if consumed in your dining room?
Making sure the customer experience in taking away or delivery is as close to that of your eat-in patrons is critical for maintaining the revenue a restaurant snack menu can provide. Customer service and consistency, as always, is the key to success, whether your meal is served at noon, 6:00 PM, or 1:00 AM.
Want to explore other industry trends for this year? Download our free eBook on “Restaurant Trends in 2018” today!

The post The Power of Snacks: How Restaurants Can Harness the Fourth Meal appeared first on Rewards Network.

But now not only does America have its own take on pizza, it has lots of different takes on pizza. Everywhere you go in the US you’ll find a different regional version of one of America’s favorite foods.

New York

One of the most well-known types on this list, New York style pizza is known for being thin, wide, and easy to fold over. Its dough is hand-tossed until thin and topped with tomato sauce and a thin layer of shredded mozzarella cheese (although obviously other toppings can be added over the mozzarella). It’s cooked in a deck oven to get that softer crust, making it perfect for folding. Then the pizza is sliced into wide pieces. Whether grabbing a slice after bar hopping or running out for one at lunch, New Yorker’s love their pizza.

New Jersey

What could possibly be the difference between a New York and New Jersey style pizza? A whole lot, especially if you ask a New Yorker or New Jersey native! Both a thin-crusts, pieces cut wide to be eaten by hand on-to-go. But the key difference is what happens when you fold your slice to take that first bite. New York style pizza reportedly owes its suppleness to the water in the city, holding its pliability without cracking. But New Jersey style gives you a nice crackle when you fold it, owing to the stone oven in which it’s cooked.

Chicago

While it’s one of many deep-dish style pizzas in the US, Chicago style pizza is probably the best known deep-dish. It’s the one that immediately comes to mind for many because it’s just that iconic. Every Chicago pizza place from Pizzeria Uno to Giordano’s has its own deep-dish crust recipe, but generally, it’s made from either wheat or semolina flour to give it a yellowish color when baked (and Lou Malnati’s has its famous butter crust). It’s pressed into a round, steel pan before adding cheese, meat and vegetables, and then the tomato sauce and sliced tomatoes — yes, in that order.

After baking, the pizza is sliced right at the table; this is to avoid the tomato sauce and oils from the toppings to soak into the crust before you can enjoy it. If you’ve ever gotten Chicago style delivered and wondered why you had to cut the pizza yourself, that’s why!

St. Louis

For St. Louis style pizza, you’ve got to start with an unleavened dough. This creates the thin, cracker-like crust that is key to a good St. Louis pizza. Tomato sauce is added, and then the special St. Louis cheese blend known as provel — white cheddar, Swiss, and provolone. After it’s baked, the pizza is cut party-style, aka into squares instead of pie slices.

Detroit

Detroit style pizza is deep-dish like Chicago’s, but it’s a very different take from their Midwest sibling. Detroit pizza is made in a square or rectangle tin pan, and the middle of the crust is nearly even with the edges. The dough itself is light and porous, similar to Sicilian dough methods. When cooked, it’s crispy on the bottom and edges but light and soft on the inside.

Like Chicago pizza, the toppings and cheese (traditionally Wisconsin brick cheese, not mozzarella) go on before the sauce, protecting the dough from getting soggy. That’s why this pizza is sometimes called “Detroit Red Top”!

New Haven

Based in New Haven, Connecticut, this brick oven cooked pizza (or “apizza,” as New Haven-style restaurants call it) has its roots in Neapolitan-style pizza but is a delicacy all on its own. New Haven uses a long cold fermentation process for the dough, and the oven gets the pizza nice and charred. A “tomato pie” skips the cheese, and most New Haven pizzerias will treat mozzarella as a topping on its own. Another variation is their white clam pizza, which combined clams, garlic, and cheese.

California

For California style pizza, it’s less about the dough (hand-tossed) or the sauce (usually tomato), but all about the toppings. This pizza leans into the cuisine of the west coast. The flavor profiles can vary wildly, it’s quail eggs or goat cheese and caramelized onions or duck sausage or lobster or smoked salmon, capers, and crème Fraiche. But the focus is always on quality ingredients and a unique pizza eating experience.

Want to explore the true range of Mexican food in America? We have your essential guide:

The post That’s Amore: American Pizza Styles and Why We Love Them All appeared first on Rewards Network.

With that in mind, we have eight quirky, tasty dessert ideas that might just be a perfect fit for your restaurant’s menu.

Tableside s’mores

When it comes to the summertime, nothing quite reminds Americans of the starry nights of summers past than s’mores. But when it comes to serving the tasty graham cracker, marshmallow, chocolate confection in your restaurant, you run into a bit of a problem — half the fun of eating s’mores is roasting the marshmallow and constructing the s’more yourself! Well, that’s where tableside service comes in.

Companies like Sterno have developed clean burning, food safe fuel sources specifically designed to toast marshmallows indoors or outdoors. All you need to do is provide the ingredients and the guests serve themselves! Just a couple words of advice: not every sterno is food safe, so make sure to only offer this dessert using ones meant to cook food over. It’s also important that you properly train your staff (especially the servers, who will be doing the tableside service) how to properly handle these kinds of open flame heat sources and how to properly put them out, too.

The milk and cookie shot

A lot of the recent dessert trends in the food industry have centered around nostalgia. Customers want to be reminded of the food that that make them feel good as a kid, but with a modern twist. Hence milk and cookies. Some restaurants have even played around with their cookie recipe so that they can form it into a working shot glass. Then you pour either straight milk (or some kind of cream-based liquor) into the cookie and serve it to patrons as a shot.

Halvah

Halvah is a dense, sugary Middle Eastern confection traditionally made from sesame seeds and flavored with vanilla, pistachio, chocolate, or orange. It can be eaten on its own, but many chefs like using shredded or crumbled halvah as a topping on muffins, brownies, donuts, quick breads, and more. Crumbled halvah also makes good mix-in ingredient for quick breads. The flavor is relatively mild, but halvah has a melt-in-your-mouth quality that can entice customers who don’t recognize the ingredient.

Churros

A fried-dough pastry with a distinctive shape, churros are popular all over the world in many different cultures. And there are many ways to make them your own. Some variations include dulce de leche, chocolate, guava, and other fruit. They can also be drizzled with chocolate or rolled in cinnamon sugar. You can play off the flavors you already have going on in your menu.

Cookie dough

Another take on an iconic childhood favorite, cookie dough tastes delicious, so it just makes sense that restaurants are bringing that nostalgia into their menus with cookie dough dessert ideas. Using egg-free (a.k.a. safe to eat raw) cookie dough recipes, there are whole cafes and dessert bars being built up around the idea of cookie dough as a sundae. If you’re looking for a hip, delicious dessert to add to your brand, seeing cookie dough on your menu will definitely catch the eye of your guests.

Rolled ice cream

A popular Thai street vendor treat, rolled ice cream is starting to make its way to the United States and is delighting customers. A sweet milk ice cream base is poured onto an anti-griddle (which makes things very cold very quickly). A metal scraper or spatula is then used to carefully roll the ice cream off the anti-griddle. From there the rolls are places horizontally in a cup and topped with any of your favorite ice cream toppings. If you already have an anti-griddle at your restaurant, why not try this quirky dessert on your menu?

Deep fried Oreos

Pulling from state fair fare (ha), deep fried Oreos are a fun, funky dessert that can be eaten in just a couple bites. The different textures from the cookie and the softened frosting paired with the batter can be a real table pleaser. Like the s’mores, these are perfect dessert ideas for any restaurant that leans into Americana cuisine but with a twist.

Need more dessert ideas for your restaurant menu that are off the beaten path? 

The post Fun, Funky Dessert Ideas to Add to Your Restaurant Menu appeared first on Rewards Network.

Size matters.

You should have each of your menu descriptions be about the same length. It doesn’t have to be perfectly equal, but you don’t want one item’s description to be significantly longer than the rest. This will help keep your menu organized and let the descriptions come through without other distractions.

Also, keep your menu descriptions fairly short. Most items should feature maybe one or two lines, although that can vary depending on what kind of restaurant you have. If you’re an upscale or fine dining establishment, then you can get away with longer descriptions. Just be careful not to risk losing your guests’ attention by making them scan a paragraph per item.

On the other hand, if you operate a fast casual restaurant and have a menu board, then brevity is your friend. You want customers to be able to quickly read through their choices and make their decision, so they don’t hold up the line.

List the ingredients.

This may seem self-explanatory, but you make sure to put all the main ingredients of a dish into its description. With so many food allergies affecting consumers today, you want to ensure your guests know exactly what they’re ordering.

Plus, giving fuller menu descriptions of each dish’s contents just provides your guest with a better idea of what they’ll be getting. One might be torn between two different entrees, but seeing their favorite vegetable listed in the description could be the deciding factor. On the other hand, if your take on poutine switches out French fries for potato chips and you don’t explain this on the menu, a guest could order it expecting a traditional version of the dish and get something they didn’t expect.

Keep it sensory.

More than anything there should be a focus on taste and texture in your menu descriptions. Are the vegetables caramelized? Is the pork loin pan seared? Is the salad topped with toasted almonds for a crunch? The language you use is all about enticing your guests. Focusing on sensory elements (especially taste, of course) makes your dishes sound extra appealing.

Just be sure to choose words your target customers know. If the name of the dish is uncommon for your marketplace, provide menu descriptions to explain what the item is in easy-to-imagine ways. While a Mexican restaurant can get away with simply listing the fillings for burritos and tacos, it might be worth it to explain what huaraches actually are to the potentially uninitiated, as well as what makes up their filling. Many customers will be too sheepish to ask your server if they can’t figure out what the dish is, and will simply order something else… or order less.

Lean into tradition.

If one of your recipes is based off a family recipe or your cultural tradition, why not highlight it? If your family has roots in Italy and this is your time-tested risotto, describing the dish as such can only strengthen the appeal. Similarly, mentioning in the description that the chicken pot pie is adapted from your Aunt Jenny’s recipe could get their attention. It plays into the nostalgia of homemade meals and gives your restaurant some added personality. Additionally, this type of personalization tells your guest that this dish has been repeatedly made and perfected over the years, adding to its allure.

Focus on health.

Restaurants with healthy dishes will want to highlight the health benefits of those foods. Unfortunately, the word healthy has become a synonym for bland in the minds of many consumers, so simply putting “healthy” as a descriptor can actually deter guests from ordering. Labeling healthy dishes with a combination of more creative, health-focused, and positive menu descriptions can bring the idea of flavor to the forefront.

If you still want to highlight your healthier dishes, create an easily identifiable symbol for those dishes and put that next to the description instead of writing it out. Just don’t forget to include a key at the bottom of each menu page as a reminder of what the symbol represents, like “low carb” or “heart healthy” options.

Appeal to customer ethics.

Consumers, particularly millennial and younger, are much more aware of ethical eating habits than ever before. They want to know if your fish is line-caught, your poultry is farm-raised, or your vegetables are locally-sourced. This doesn’t necessarily have to be phrasing you use for individual item descriptions, especially if your vendor only sometimes offers these options to you. But a short “about us” on your menu that describes how you actively buy locally sourced, farm-raised, or line caught ingredients can be attractive for guests who lean into these concerns.

Above all, be accurate.

It may be tempting to say your beef stew is a family recipe when it isn’t, or state your produce is still locally sourced when it’s not. But customers come into restaurants with an expectation of trust, and you do not want to lose that trust. Nothing stifles a guest’s excitement more than being served an order that does not line up with its menu description. Whether it’s about the healthiness of the dish or the flavors, being accurate means setting the right expectations for each and every guest every time. And it could help keep you out of hot water on social media and negative reviews, too!

Want more tips on building a menu that will boost your bottom line? Download our free eBook on “Menu Magic” today:

The post Whatchamacallit? Why Menu Descriptions Matter appeared first on Rewards Network.

Making targeted choices about where to cut restaurant costs and where to leave expenses be (no matter how high or low they may be) is a crucial part of maintaining balance in your bottom line. Cut too hastily, and you’ll end up alienating customers with reduced service or missing favorites on your daily menu. But cut decisively, and you’ll be able to grow your business out of the health of what’s left.

And with your menu items in particular, it’s important to identify how profitable and how popular each dish in question is. The pattern of where these two factors overlap (or do not) can give you a clear sense of where to begin in controlling restaurant costs.

All menu items can be properly broken down into one of these four categories, with fanciful names to help you remember and identify:

• Star (high profit, high popularity): dishes that people love and that make you money.
• Plow horse (low profit, high popularity): dishes that people love and that you break even on — but make up in volume.
• Dog (low profit, low popularity): dishes that do not get ordered and that cost you a lot of money to prepare.
• Puzzle (high profit, low popularity): Dishes that do not get ordered, but that would make you money if they did.

Determining what’s what on your menu takes careful cross-referencing of order records in your point-of-sale (POS) system and a complete breakdown of cost per dish, ingredient by ingredient (maybe even with consideration for the labor involved in its production). But once you have that, you should be able to locate each dish on the matrix above. And that’s where the fun begins.

We have seven surefire ways to manage your menu — using this information and matrix — that will help you control your prime restaurant costs without cutting your profits off at the knees.

1. Dump the dogs. Now.

Maybe it’s your chef’s favorite. Maybe it’s yours. It could even be promoted as the signature dish for your restaurant. But if no one orders it, it’s still a dog on your menu, taking up space instead of something that customers actually will order. That’s costing you money, every single day.

Because the profit potential is too low, dogs are not even worth attempting to tweak into something better. However emotional it may be to part ways, the responsible thing to do — and the thing that will actually affect your prime costs, is just to simply dump these dishes and replace them with something that has more profit and/or popularity potential.

2. Add variety to the plow horses.

Plow horses could easily be stars just waiting to be discovered. You’ve already jumped the first hurdle – customers want to order these dishes. Now is the time to experiment and see what can kick them up to the next level.

It could be as simple as varying the size of the dish by time of day or occasion. Maybe your Chicken Caesar Salad is low profit at half size, but at full dinner size it increases in value for you. Likewise, some appetizers could be low profit at sharing size, but pick up in profitability in individual portions, especially if it encourages a table to order more than one.

Offering alternative versions of a dish that incorporates premium ingredients can be another way to boost the profitability of a plow horse. Customers are used to seeing dishes with more flair jump up in price, so when you incorporate avocado or bacon or blue cheese into a cleverly named dish, it gives your customers an option that gets you closer to your goal as a restaurateur.

You can always try this type of variation through add-ons, if you want to preserve menu space. For instance, pizza may not be a huge profit center for you, but it is something guest typically enjoy customizing. And spending on premium ingredients can tally up to a price on a plow horse to easily rival that of a star.

3. Look for redundancies.

At the same time, determine whether you really need multiple versions of a dish. Is it really that popular? Does your Chicken Caesar Salad nearly always get ordered in dinner portion? If so, why even offer the lunch as an alternative, especially if the dinner portion is more profitable for you? If your Grilled Cheese Sandwich menu is 8 sandwiches deep in variation — and none of them particularly stand out as a star — it could be worth condensing these menu items down to a single item with multiple options for customization.

 4. Increase prices moderately on stars.

Stars are often menu items that will get ordered — because of their uniqueness or high quality — even at a higher price. If you are the only restaurant in town offering Oysters on the Half Shell, and that dish is a star for you, odds are guests will pay just a little bit more. There’s no reason to gouge your customers, but likewise, there’s no reason to undermine your own prep time, COGS, and presentation with a bargain price on a highly sought-after dish.

5. Eliminate one-trick ponies.

Any dish that features an ingredient requiring a special, one-of-a-kind purchase for your kitchen should go — unless it pays for itself three times over. If that dish is indeed a star, then start devising one or two more dishes that could highlight the ingredient. The economies of scale in ordering should make your star even more profitable. Best case scenario: maybe you’ll end up with three star dishes!

6. Rearrange your menu.

Believe it or not, the physical size of your menu has a huge impact on costs, in more ways than one. Obviously, if your menu is enormous, the likelihood of dishes that don’t get ordered — or don’t get ordered as much as they should — ramps up. That just increases your inventory costs and potentially your waste budget.

But there are other reasons to cut back to a two-panel (or less) menu. Customers can get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of your offerings, which makes it harder for you to direct their eyes to the items which produce the most profit and incur the least costs on your menu.

Within categories (appetizers, salad, sandwiches, entrees, etc.) arrange items not by most expensive to least, but by most profitable to least. Highlight your stars either by calling them out graphically or increasing the type size so they jump out among all the other choices.

And lastly, if an ingredient in your restaurant costs you more money than your average component, print it on the menu. It’s likely the ingredient that’s enticing guests to order it. But if bacon or crab meat or gorgonzola cheese is not the alluring characteristic of a particular dish, why use it then? It’s costing you money that’s not seeing a return on investment.

7. Tweak your puzzles.

There’s some reason why these items don’t get ordered. Figure it out. They are taking up space on your menu that you can’t afford, costing you money EVERY SINGLE DAY.

• Is it because they’re off-brand? Dump them for a variation on a star.
• Is it because they’re just not marketed correctly? Rewrite them on the menu. Use descriptive words to entice the senses, like “wood-fired,” “heirloom,” or “freshly made.”
• Is it because they don’t have enough allure? You may have room to add a premium ingredient or two and remain profitable. Your puzzle could be a star in the making with just a simple tweak.
• Is it because they’re just a little bit off? Consider using a limited time offer to promote the dish but with a few tweaks here and there. See if the adjusted LTO dish has enough popularity to make it a star!

No matter what the mix of stars, plow horses, dogs, and puzzles on your menu, it’s important to always be thinking about ways to make your menu — and your business overall — more profitable, cutting restaurant costs while maintaining the level of quality your customers associate with your brand.

Want more tips on controlling restaurant costs? Check out our advice on inventory management and food waste:

The post Menu Management: How to Control Restaurant Costs Dish by Dish appeared first on Rewards Network.

Can my menu help increase my restaurant sales?

In our newest report, we walk through four big factors that can help you decide whether your restaurant menu design is a big success or holding you back:

• Restaurant menu design
• Pricing of individual dishes
• Overall menu size
• Seasonality of offerings

Download this free eBook today to see if your menu is working as hard as it can to increase your sales.

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years in the food industry, it’s that every menu is some restaurateur’s baby. That can be a problem. Yes, your menu is the heart and soul of what a chef and owner want to put out into the world, but your menu is also key to ensuring you make money when you do. This dual reality can sometimes be difficult to reconcile.

Many restaurateurs express an emotional connection to every item listed on their menu, but at the end of the day, when everything is special, nothing is. It’s important to recognize opportunities for bigger profit, and identify ways to structure your menu not just to attract new customers, but to keep those customers coming back for more — again and again.

Know what you have.

Before you work on revising your menu layout, it’s important to conduct the cost audit we referenced briefly in the introduction. It is the only way to truly understand how every single item on your menu actually works for you in terms of profit and popularity. Once your analysis is complete, you’ll likely find some dishes from all four categories of items: Plow horse, star, dog, and puzzle.

Plow horse: low profit, high popularity

This could be your soup and salad lunch special, a one topping pizza, or that draft beer that seems to pull people in after work day after day. The plow horses are items that you probably sell a whole lot of, because they are priced with sensitivity to consumers who aren’t looking to spend a lot in one sitting but then inevitably become frequent, repeat customers as a result. Try to keep plow horses available and stable in price for as long as possible to keep pulling those repeat customers in.

Star: high profit, high popularity

These are the items that may be unique to your establishment, maybe even a dish your restaurant is known for. You can increase the price (within reason), and people will still buy them. Why? Because they can’t get them anywhere else. This could be a version of a popular dish made with higher quality or more unique ingredients — like pork belly dim sum — or a dish that very few restaurants have on their menus — like poutine or roasted chicken.

Dog: Low profit, low popularity

These menu items take up space that could be allocated to more profitable items, and when they are ordered, they can reduce sales of your stars and puzzles – your more profitable offerings. Try to get dogs off your menu, as fast as possible. If for some reason, you absolutely must keep them on, add $1 or $2 to the price. Make them worth your while.

Puzzle: High profit, low popularity

These are those dishes that should sell better, but aren’t. The reasons for that can be a real mystery to you. Don’t take them off the menu. Just try to figure out how to sell more of them. Maybe take the price down a little, or give them better placement on your menu. If you play around with the recipes, remember not to damage their profitability, but only do things that will make the dishes sell better.

Puzzles are likely to benefit most from the following ideas for making your menu more profitable and attractive to repeat customers.

Spotlight your stars.

Displaying a signature spotlight on your menu is a great way to drive interest to a particular item that’s “highly recommended by our chef” (or accountants). Box that dish in to make it stand out among the others. This technique draws the eye in and can make the work of scanning a menu less arduous for the diners’ weary eyes. But like anything else, the more you use this trick, the less it means. Limit your spotlight items to one per menu category.

Occasionally, restaurants will also feature decoys — items that would so rarely get ordered that it seems silly to leave them on the menu, like a 72oz steak or a banana split with 12 kinds of ice cream served in a kitchen sink. So why feature them? Because these types of extreme menu offerings can get your customers’ brain moving. You might not order a steak as big as your head, but just reading about it might put you in the mood for a much more reasonably priced (and profitable) 20oz Prime Rib.

Draw customers in.

Yes, keeping your menu clean and easy to read means eliminating distractions. But like spotlight items, drawn graphics can help pull the customers’ eyes across your menu page when used sparingly.

The post How to Use Restaurant Menu Design to Increase Your Sales appeared first on Rewards Network.

While there is no right or wrong way to put together your list, there may be some approaches that make more sense than others for the specific atmosphere and/or clientele of your restaurant. Regardless of how you approach the fun of putting together a wine list (and it should be fun!), below are a few things to keep in mind as you taste your way to a great list.

Is Your Wine User-Friendly?

Your wine list should be appealing and approachable at first glance. How the information is organized — and even what font you use — will be a factor in maintaining your customer’s interest. Also consider how someone who may not be very familiar with wine will be able to navigate your list with relative ease. Usually wine lists start off with sparkling wines, moving on to whites, reds, and lastly, dessert wines (if available).

Categorizing the wines by easy-to-identify groupings, such as by country or region (USA/Napa Valley, France/Bordeaux) or by varietal (Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon) will help customers identify the types of wine they like more quickly and with minimal frustration.

Regardless of the grouping you choose, wines should be listed progressively, with the lightest wines listed first, followed by medium-bodied and full-bodied wines. For example, in the reds category, you might list your wines in the following order: Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache Syrah Merlot blend. This will make the list easier for diners to peruse and pair with their meals.

You could also sub-categorize within each grouping with descriptors indicating the intensity of the wine, such as “light and fruity” or “big fruit and full-bodied.”

Message on the Bottle

Along with clear organization, how much information to include about each wine is also an important consideration. At a minimum, you should list the wine varietal, the wine’s producer, the region of origin, and the vintage date, such as: Shiraz Cabernet, Penfolds Koonunga Hill, South Australia, 2015.

You might also consider adding brief tasting notes for each of the wines. While this may be cumbersome for more extensive lists (see below), a bit of descriptive information will give customers a sense of the wine’s style and personality, and empower them to make a choice without feeling like they are at the mercy of the wine director or server.

This is especially true if your list features wines made from less well-known varietals or regions. Even just a few words, such as “off-dry, light and fruity” or “full-bodied, plum and spice notes” can tell a customer a lot about a wine. You might even include gentle suggestions about food pairings, such as “goes great with fish” or “complements rich foods.”

More is Not Always Better

There will be varying schools of thought on this but generally speaking, no one likes to feel like they just got handed a homework assignment after asking for the wine list. There’s a lot to be said for a targeted, thoughtfully chosen list of wines that are well-organized and can guide the customer though the options.

You might also consider whether your servers and bartenders can navigate and manage a voluminous wine list, especially if you don’t have a dedicated beverage director who can serve as a point of contact for both staff and customers.

If you know your customer base relishes the challenges of combing through a multi-page tome for hidden gems, then by all means go for it. Otherwise, if there are truly special bottles that you would like to have on offer that may not be for everyone, consider offering a reserve list.

Consider Your Brand

When it comes down to task of actually choosing which wines make the cut, you’ll certainly want to consider the tone, atmosphere, food, and clientele of your restaurant, and have the wines you select be an extension of that vision. If your restaurant focuses on modern plates and you cater to an adventurous crowd, you might want to feature wines that from regions that aren’t well represented, such as Greece, Israel, or South Africa, or unusual styles, such as orange wines. If your restaurant is more oriented toward Mediterranean-influenced dishes, you might showcase Italian and Spanish wines.

While there are many thematic directions you can take with your wine selections, keep versatility in mind. Make sure at least two wines on your list pair well with each dish on the restaurant’s menu. Not every wine on the list need be specially selected for the food, especially if your restaurant’s menu changes regularly, but having a few solid pairing recommendations will send the message that some sincere thought was put into both the food and the wine.

Find the Right Price

In addition to name or grape recognition, price is often a driving factor for how customers choose their wine. No one likes to look at the wine list and feel like their only option is to buy an expensive bottle. Likewise if someone’s looking to splurge, it’s no fun if there’s no room to explore.

Include a selection of wines in every category at a variety of price points to accommodate a range of budgets. This is also a chance for your beverage director or sommelier to demonstrate that outstanding bottles of wine don’t have to come with an outstanding price tag.

How a restaurant determines the price can be done in a number of ways. Many in the industry use a mark-up of three times the wholesale bottle price, while others consider pricing in relation to the cost of entrées. Also pay attention the cost of wines by the glass, making sure it’s cheaper to buy the bottle than several glasses of wine.

That Personal Touch

Your servers and bartenders will be the first and best advocates for your wine list, so be sure they know what the wines taste like! Customers will have a much more satisfactory experience if their server can confidently describe the wines and guide the customer through the list.

As always, tasting is key to deepening your knowledge of wine. Taste your wine to develop a great wine list, and encourage your staff and customers to do the same!

Want a cheat sheet on how to train your staff to sell wine?

The post Putting Your Best Grape Forward: Developing Your Restaurant Wine List appeared first on Rewards Network.