If you were to ask anyone what the most important aspect of a restaurant is, their immediate answer would probably be food. When you go out to eat, you want quality food with fresh and tasty ingredients. However, what you may not consider is the importance of a restaurant having a quality menu.
This may seem surprising, as menus probably aren’t consciously important to most, but they have a far greater impact than most people realize. A menu should be more than just a list of what a restaurant has to offer. It should function as an advertisement and roadmap. It should reflect the values an establishment has and provide guidance to consumers.
Your Eyes Are the Heart to Your Stomach
Most of our brainpower is allocated to receiving and interpreting visual stimuli. Sayings like “their eyes are bigger than their stomachs,” tend to hold a lot of merit. People want things that look visually appealing to them.
Having a menu with high-quality images arranged tastefully is the first step in getting a potential customer interested in what a restaurant has to offer. If you take a look at a Papa John’s menu, you’ll see that the image arrangement and the bright, inviting colors function as a neon sign to customers that their food looks good, and therefore, tastes good.
Honesty Is the Best Policy
With the variety of health conditions and dietary lifestyles, it is crucial that customers know what’s going into their food. A menu that lists ingredients and related health information is a valuable tool.
Being forthcoming about ingredients and health information inspires trust in customers and allows them to make informed decisions about what goes in their bodies. Stuffed Crust delivery is a lot more enjoyable when you don’t have to worry about what hidden calories or ingredients might be lurking beneath the cheesy surface.
Quality Equals Trust
When you have a quality menu, customers are more likely to trust your brand. As the founder of Arby’s demonstrates, providing quality service to customers establishes a long-lasting relationship that inspires people to continue supporting your business.
A quality menu is a crucial piece of this trust. Seeing an old, sloppy list of dishes shows that the restaurant doesn’t care about its image. It showcases a lack of awareness of its audience and its inability to think highly of its customers. On the other hand, an organized menu inspires confidence that the restaurant is aware of its customer base and cares about its views.
It’s easy for restaurants to make the mistake of treating menus like unimportant lists of food that they serve, and to a certain point, it makes sense. Food, restaurant décor, and health and safety concerns are pressing and more visible.
However, menus are a crucial aspect of a restaurant’s image that deserve as much time and monetary resources as anything else. Not only is it vital that menus be informational and visually appealing, but they should be kept up-to-date in order to reflect a restaurant’s current values and culture.
