TCMC Blog

Why Systems (Not Hustle) Drive Growth for Multi-Location Restaurants

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:30:26 GMT

After 14 Years Supporting Restaurant Brands,

These Are the 5 Bottlenecks We See Every Time

Most growing restaurant groups start the same way. You nail the menu design. You build some social media momentum. You open a second location, maybe a third. Things feel good.

Then something shifts.

The promotions that used to feel manageable start feeling chaotic. Your marketing director is spending more time coordinating logistics than thinking about strategy. Materials arrive late, look inconsistent, or don't arrive at all. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you start wondering: if it's this hard to execute across three locations, what happens when we open five?

Here's the truth most operators don't want to hear: the problem isn't effort. Your team is working hard. The problem is that the systems you used to grow to three locations are the same ones slowing you down now.

Sound Familiar?

It's Monday morning. Your marketing director just finalized a Veterans Day promotion that needs to run across all 12 locations by Thursday.

Now starts the scramble. Getting designs approved. Finding a printer who can turn it around in time. Figuring out quantities per location. Coordinating pickup and delivery across multiple sites.

By Wednesday night, someone is making runs to FedEx Office because the original printer missed the deadline. By Friday, three locations still don't have materials. The promotion is half-baked, the print quality varies from location to location, and the whole thing cost twice what it should have in time and money.

This. Happens. Every. Single. Promotion.

The promotion gets approved. But the system to execute it doesn't exist.

That's not a marketing problem. That's a structural one.

The 5 Bottlenecks Behind the Problem

After 13 years designing and supporting restaurant menus and print materials for multi-location groups, we've seen this story play out hundreds of times. It almost always comes down to the same five issues.

1. Vendor Fragmentation

One vendor for menus. Another for table tents. Someone else for emergency printing when a deadline gets missed. When you source every job separately, you sacrifice consistency for what feels like savings. Different vendors mean different paper stocks, different color profiles, and different timelines. What you save on individual jobs, you lose in brand equity and wasted time.

2. Distribution Chaos

Once the materials leave the printer, they enter an unmanaged free-for-all. Delivering printed pieces to multiple locations often falls to whoever is available — a marketing director, a general manager, sometimes the owner. This is labor-intensive at two locations and impossible at ten. Scaling your location count without solving distribution is a guarantee that something will be late, missing, or wrong.

3. Quality Inconsistency

When jobs are spread across multiple vendors, your brand looks different at every location. Guests may not consciously notice, but inconsistency erodes trust over time. A menu that looks polished at your flagship and generic at your newest location sends a message you don't intend to send.

4. Timeline Unpredictability

Relying on conventional print services makes it nearly impossible to build a reliable promotional calendar. When you can't count on delivery dates, you can't plan campaigns with confidence. Time-sensitive promotions get rushed. Last-minute jobs get expensive. And your team spends more energy managing exceptions than executing strategy.

5. Approval and Communication Loops

One person approves via email. Another rejects via text. Files get renamed, duplicated, and confused — "V3 Final" versus "V3 Final-Final-Edits." Without a single source of truth, the decision-making process becomes a liability. Mistakes make it to print. Deadlines slip. And no one is quite sure who approved what.

The Fix: Build a System That Scales

None of these bottlenecks are inevitable. They're the result of processes that were never designed to scale — and the good news is that they're fixable.

The path forward isn't more hustle. It's more structure.

Align your design, print, and approval process under one workflow. Centralize feedback so there's no ambiguity about what's been approved. Standardize your specs and materials so every location gets the same quality, every time. And simplify the process enough that your marketing team can focus on strategy instead of supply chains.

When those pieces are in place, a promotion that used to take a week of scrambling becomes a repeatable, predictable system. One that works whether you have three locations or thirty.

From Chaos to Clarity

The difference between a restaurant group that plateaus and one that keeps growing isn't effort. It's structure.

Consistency, speed, and brand alignment don't happen by accident. They happen by design. And after 13 years helping restaurant groups build and deploy their brand across multiple locations, we've seen what works — and what doesn't.

If any part of this story sounds familiar, that's where the conversation starts.

Your Brand Is Every Conversation Guests Have About You

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 15:21:42 GMT

How Consistent Branding Builds Trust and Revenue

Branding is how you show up visually, verbally, and emotionally everything from the way your host greets, how your menu reads, how your photos look, how your dishes arrive.

Again and again until your guests can recognize you instantly.

This guide focuses on the thing that turns good branding into real revenue: consistency.

What Is Branding? Why It Matters for Restaurants

Branding isn’t a logo, a color, or a clever tagline. It’s the total of every interaction with your guests before, during, and after the visit. That includes the obvious things (name, menu, photography) and the quiet details (how the host greets, how fast pickup is, how your to-go containers look, how you reply to reviews). Over time, those moments add up to beliefs: This place is warm. They’re fast. They always get my order right. That belief is your brand.

Branding is not what you claim but what guests come to believe . If your ad reads “fast casual,” but ticket times are 30 minutes, the brand in the guest’s mind is “slow and frustrating.” as they’re coming to expect a fast and casual service.

Brand Recognition

Recognition is the feeling of “I know these people” in one scroll or one glance. It comes from visual and verbal repetition , everything from color repeating in ads, interiors, menus and logos, food photos looking consistent in look, angles, lighting and framing, anything that can identify you and familiarize your guests with who you are.

Recognition reduces decision time. When guests instantly identify you like a needle in a haystack, you’ve cleared the first and most expensive marketing problem, recognition.

Brand Loyalty

Loyalty is built when the experience matches the expectations every time. That consistency creates trust and then loyalty earning your restaurant repeat visits, how does consistency in terms of branding look like?

The drinks and dishes are consistent in terms of both flavor and presentation
There’s consistency in how the social media, the website, the menu and even the location itself looks.
Your guests know what to expect in terms of quality of service and food.

Loyalty creates trust and ends up growing your average order value, since regulars tend to explore and try add-ons or seasonal products or features because they trust you, they’re therefore more likely to try out your puzzles.

Consistency

You can’t control every Yelp review or every night’s rush, but you can control branding consistency .

the steady, predictable rhythm of how you look, sound, and deliver. When those elements line up, branding stops being a cost and starts increasing revenue. Consistent branding has been proven to increase revenue and lower marketing costs.

What should you standardize:

Visuals: One primary color, one secondary, one accent; one headline font + one body font; a short photo style guide (angles, background, lighting) maintain branding consistency across social media, websites, menus, communications, ephemera or official documents as well as the locations themselves.
Menus across locations: Maintain the same menu across locations creating a consistent experience, guarantee your guests a seamless experience regardless of location.
Service, Portions and Quality: make sure to maintain consistent portions and sizes, (some providers will offer pre-portioned steaks or chicken), as well as consistent quality and presentation this means standardized plating and packaging (to-go boxes).

Consistency isn’t sameness. Your seasonal menu can change weekly; the way you present it should feel the same.

Ready to get help branding your menu?

Get in touch and start using data to design a menu that actively grows your business.

Using POS Data to Design your Menu for Profit

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 15:56:24 GMT

As a restaurant owner, you probably have an idea of what your best-selling dishes are.

The burgers that fly out of the kitchen, or that one popular pasta you're constantly re-stocking ingredients for.

But what if I told you that your "best-selling" item might not be the one making you the most money?

And what if a few simple design changes on your menu could dramatically increase your profits?

The answers are in your Point of Sale (POS) system.

Your POS is a treasure chest of data that reveals exactly what your customers love and, more importantly, which items are padding your bottom line.

Relying on guesswork is just leaving money on the table.

At Main Street Menu Club, we’re not just designers; we're data analysts. We use your POS data to engineer menu designs that increase profit and sales. Let's break down how you can use this powerful data to turn your menu into your most effective salesperson

Best-Selling vs. Most Profitable: The Two Numbers That Matter Most

Best-Selling (Popularity): This is purely about volume. You can find this information easily in your POS system's "Item Sales Report." It tells you that you sold 500 orders of French Fries last month and only 80 orders of the Ribeye Steak. Simple.

Most Profitable (Profitability): This is about your profit margin on each dish. To find this, you need one more piece of information: the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for each menu item. The formula is straightforward: Menu Price - COGS = Gross Profit . The Ribeye Steak might only sell 80 units, but if it has a $20 profit margin ($1600 total profit), it's far more valuable than the 500 orders of fries that only have a $1.50 margin ($750 total profit).

Understanding this difference is everything. Your goal isn't just to sell more food; it's to sell more of the food that makes you the most money.

The Menu Engineering Matrix: Finding Your Winners

You figure out your sales volume (popularity) and profit margin (profitability) for each item and then you can use a classic tool called the Menu Engineering Matrix .

Your items will fall into one of four categories:

⭐ Stars (High Profitability, High Popularity): These are your superstars. They are loved by customers and make you great money. Your entire menu design should be built around highlighting these items.

�� Puzzles (High Profitability, Low Popularity): These are your hidden gems—highly profitable dishes that people just aren't ordering often enough. They represent a huge opportunity. With the right menu design, you can turn a Puzzle into a Star.

�� Plowhorses (Low Profitability, High Popularity): These are your workhorses. They are popular and keep customers coming back, but they don't contribute much to your bottom line. Think side salads, fries, or a basic chicken sandwich. You need to keep them, but you don't need to promote them.

�� Dogs (Low Profitability, Low Popularity): This is the dead weight. These items aren't popular, and they don't make you money. They take up valuable space on your menu and in your inventory. In most cases, these should be removed.

How to Design Your Menu for Maximum Profit

Now for the fun part: using this data to strategically design your menu. Your menu's layout isn't arbitrary; it's a science. Customers' eyes tend to follow a specific path. You can use this to your advantage.

1. Spotlight Your Stars ⭐

Studies show that a customer's eyes are typically drawn first to the center of the page, then the top right, then the top left . This is where you should position your Stars.

Place your Star items in these high-visibility zones. Make them impossible to miss by putting a box around them, using a slightly bolder font, or adding a small, tasteful icon like a star or "House Favorite" label next to them.

2. Solve Your Puzzles ��

Puzzles are your biggest design opportunity. They are already profitable; they just need a marketing push. Give a Puzzle a prime spot on the menu, perhaps in that top-right corner. Rewrite its description using enticing, sensory words (e.g., instead of "Chicken with sauce," try "Pan-seared chicken breast with a creamy, sun-dried tomato and basil sauce"). Consider featuring one Puzzle with a single, high-quality professional photograph.

3. Manage Your Plowhorses ��

Plowhorses are popular crowd-pleasers, but their high demand doesn’t always equal high profit. The key is to keep them on the menu while making small adjustments that boost margins.

Avoid giving them prime real estate—let guests discover them lower on the list. To elevate profitability, consider a slight price or recipe adjustment, or pair them with high-margin add-ons. For example: “Make it deluxe with bacon and avocado for $2.”

4. Hide (or Remove) Your Dogs ��

Dogs are taking up space, if you’ve identified them and confirmed that they are simply not selling, get rid of them and replace them with potential stars.

Stop Guessing. Start Selling.

Analyzing POS reports and calculating profit margins for every single item takes a lot of time and attention to detail but it takes the guesswork out of the picture, it helps you find out what products to highlight and what others to get rid of.

Don’t leave things to chance, don’t leave money on the table, your menu should be your hardest-working employee, upselling and training servers, improving sales and increasing profits, our job is to make your menu work smarter.

Ready to see what your data is telling you?

Get in touch and start using data to design a menu that actively grows your business.

14 Essential Features Every Restaurant Website Must Have (and Why)

jennie@drivendigital.co (Jennie Alberto) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 17:06:05 GMT

In the ever-evolving landscape of the hospitality industry, your restaurant's digital presence is more crucial than ever. Your website is the virtual front door to your culinary world, the first impression that can make or break a potential diner's decision. In this blog post, we'll explore the essential features that transcend the mundane, ensuring your restaurant website stands out in the crowded digital dining space.

1. Mobile-First Design

Prioritize mobile responsiveness. Many users access websites on their phones, so your site must look and function well on various screen sizes.

2. Loading Speed

Optimize your site for fast loading speeds. Slow websites can turn away potential customers. Compress images and use efficient coding practices.

3. Sticky Navigation

Place a sticky navigation bar at the top or bottom for easy access to essential buttons like Click-To-Call, Order Online, and/or Make a Reservation. This ensures customers can take action swiftly.

4. Hero Image/Video

Use a captivating hero image or video that reflects the restaurant’s ambiance and cuisine. This visual element should be both inviting and reflective of the dining experience.

5. HTML Menu Optimization

Organize your menu in a clean, easy-to-read HTML format. Use concise descriptions, and consider grouping items logically. This aids in better user experience and SEO.

6. Reviews and Testimonials

Integrate customer reviews and testimonials. Genuine feedback builds trust. Highlight positive reviews to showcase your restaurant’s reputation.

7. Contact Info Clearly Displayed

Clearly display contact details, including phone number, email, and physical address. Make it easy for customers to reach you.

8. Reservation Widget

Embed a reservation widget directly on your site. This streamlines the booking process for customers and encourages more reservations.

9. Social Media Integration

Link your social media accounts. Social proof is crucial, and customers may want to follow you for updates and promotions.

10. Events Calendar

Include an events calendar for special occasions, promotions, or live entertainment. This not only engages customers but also contributes to SEO.

11. VIP/Newsletter Signup

Encourage customer loyalty by including a VIP or Newsletter signup form. Offer exclusive deals or updates to incentivize sign-ups.

12. Photo Gallery

Create a photo gallery showcasing your dishes, interior, and events. High-quality images can entice customers and make them eager to visit.

13. Private Events Page

Design a dedicated page for private events with a contact form. Make it easy for potential clients to inquire about hosting events at your restaurant.

14. Accessibility Features

Ensure your website complies with ADA accessibility standards. This makes your site usable for everyone, including those with disabilities and helps prevent compaints or lawsuits.

In conclusion, your restaurant's website is more than just an online presence; it's a digital extension of your culinary passion. By incorporating these essential features, you transform your website into an experience that captivates, engages and converts visitors into loyal patrons. Stay hungry for innovation, adapt to digital trends, and watch your restaurant's online success unfold.

QR Codes: When and how to use them most effectively

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:06:36 GMT

QR, short for Quick Response, technology was originally developed around the same time as the earlier smart phone models. In those days, you used to have to download a QR code reader app in order to scan the barcode and open the intended page. Nowadays with the newer technology, it all happens using the camera app which comes installed on everyones phone, simplifying the entire process and making it accessible to a wider audience.

Why did the QR code become so popular in recent years?

We all know the answer to this one. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were rarely dining inside restaurants, especially in the first few months when takeout orders were the norm. When restaurants eventually reopened for indoor dining, nobody wanted to touch the same printed menu that had been handled by countless others. Enter the rebirth of the QR code.

Scanning a QR code with your phone takes you to the online menu of the restaurant you're dining at. This solution effectively addressed the concern of spreading germs through physical menus, as now customers can simply view the menu on their phones. However, one may argue that people are already spending a significant amount of time on their phones. Did COVID accelerate the adoption of digital menus? And now the question arises: "Are QR codes the future, rendering printed menus obsolete?" Or can we find ways to utilize both options? Let's explore the pros and cons of each.

First and foremost, one of the main advantages of QR codes is the ability to update menus digitally, allowing for instant changes. This feature can be a time-saver for busy restaurant owners, as opposed to going through the process of updating designs, printing, shipping, or even printing menus on-site.

The ease and speed of making a menu live with a few clicks sounds appealing. It allows restaurateurs to adapt to fluctuating food costs more efficiently.

Additionally, mistakes happen, such as typos or pricing errors, and it's much easier to fix them on a digital menu than having to contact the designer, update the menu, and reprint the entire batch.

However, we cannot overlook the power of the printed menu.

Let's discuss the sociological and economic benefits of having a physical restaurant menu.

In today's society, we are constantly glued to our phones – whether at work, at home, or with friends – and this behavior is gradually diminishing our attention spans. The problem with QR codes is that they do nothing to counteract this behavior; they bring us right back to our phones. Consequently, your guests transition from a captive audience to distracted diners.

Dining out is one of the most popular forms of socializing in our culture. It is an experience that tends to keep people engaged with one another in the physical world for an extended period. Whether it's a casual meal, a special night out, or a catered event, the highlight often revolves around the array of food that will be enjoyed in the company of others. Consider it a win if a group of hungry diners chooses your restaurant for their meal. However, your job is far from finished.

One of the first impressions your guests will have upon entering your establishment is through the menu, regardless of its form.

The physical menu serves as a collaborative piece of content at the table. People can pass it around, peruse sections together, and point out items that catch their eye. Imagine being on a date – isn't it more intimate to share the menu and discuss different dishes to share, rather than silently staring at the screen in your hand?

Printed menus also offer benefits to the staff. If a customer wants to inquire about an ingredient or a dish, it's more practical to point to the item on the menu they're holding, rather than navigating to the correct place on their phone or handing the device to the server. Moreover, the menu acts as a signal – one that we are all familiar with. When we have made our decision about what to order, we put the menu down, often at the end of the table, indicating to the server that we are ready to order. This action is challenging to replicate with a phone. If we pause to look up from the screen for a moment, it doesn’t necessarily mean we have come to a decision.

Another crucial factor to consider regarding the printed menu is its ability to be designed for profit. The menu is the single most significant sales tool you have as a business owner. You have full control over how the sections and items are structured and presented to the diner. How can you intentionally structure the menu to influence what the customer orders?

Savvy restaurateurs keep an eye on their top-selling items and dishes that provide the best profit margins, and they reflect this accordingly through subtle visual cues and design elements. Working through this process with a professional can significantly enhance your bottom line. This is another factor that is almost impossible to replicate digitally. At no time can someone look at the entire menu on their phone without having to scroll or zoom in.

So what’s the best way to utilize the QR Code?

Every patron that walks into your restaurant to dine is a valuable marketing opportunity. You now have a captive audience sitting at the same table for 45 minutes to a few hours. A well-placed table tent with an enticing promotion, such as dessert or drink specials, can influence a higher check in the moment.

How does the QR code come back into play? Let's consider an example where a table tent advertises a contest (Scan to Enter our Raffle) with a code that leads to a page where customers can provide their name and email address. By doing so, you're curating a database of people who have already dined at your establishment, willingly engaged with your marketing. Now, you have the ability to retarget them with future specials and promotions. These guests are more likely to return compared to spending money on marketing to people who have never visited or heard of your restaurant.

The ideal scenario for enhancing the user experience involves a hybrid model that incorporates QR codes with printed in-store menus and signage. This allows diners to engage with your marketing on their terms.

In conclusion, QR codes are here to stay, and for good reason. They serve a purpose and can solve logistical problems. However, if you solely rely on QR codes as your menu offering, you miss the opportunity to keep people in the moment and benefit from their undivided attention.

4 Types of Menus that Guide the Dining Experience

jennie@drivendigital.co (Jennie Alberto) — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 18:35:18 GMT

It comes down to the kind of experience you want to provide, and the way your food is served is definitely going to drive the dining experience.

As a restauranteur, the way you serve your menu items, in what capacity and for what purpose, really drives the dining experience. Are you on a first date? Are you with your entire family? Are you trying different things? Are you having a big night out? When it comes to sit-down dining, there are generally four different menu types that guide the dining experience.

The goal of every restaurant is to provide a place for people to come and be social and happy together, because the more comfortable people are in a place the smoother the operations go in a restaurant.

The four types of menus we are discussing are categorized as follows: family style, shared plates, the sequential menu and the flexible menu. Whenever you go out to eat, you're most likely going to encounter one or a hybrid of these menus. Each menu strategy employs a unique set of rhetorical tools to create a scene of sociability that suits the restaurateur.

Lets begin with family style or “large format dining”. This is common in Italian restaurants, Korean barbecue and Chinese restaurants where large portions are meant to be shared. One of the things that is a very common feature in a family style dining establishment is a more communal type of seating arrangements are set up. This could be picnic benches or large tables that encourage a larger group to sit around and share.

There also may be a large empty plate at every table setting. This is different from the smaller charger plate that you would see at a traditional restaurant.

This empty plate implies that you shouldn't expect a dish to come out of the kitchen already composed just for you. Instead expect big dishes in the center of the table with serving spoons.

Another big factor when you're family style dining is the way that the menu is structured.

There's less instruction coming from the servers, the menu is traditionally broken up by food type rather than course. So you'll see vegetables, pasta, chicken and fish encouraging the diner to choose from different sections of the menu.

This concept definitely incentivizes larger parties. It also provides a longer table turnover.

However – because it's a larger group – they're ordering more food and theoretically the higher check mitigates the fewer table turns. There's also an additional perceived value. I used to go out with my mom and she would love the large plates because you're getting another meal out of it afterwards. We may not eat all of it in one sitting , but now we have enough for lunch tomorrow. It definitely creates a certain type of experience. Many Italian restaurants are known for that .

The atemporal structure of the family style menu helps the restaurant on the operational front as well. Not having to time the courses gives the kitchen more flexibility, and they don't need an expeditor to sink up the pace of the kitchen with the diners. Everything comes out of the kitchen onto the table whenever it's ready and the customers are okay with that.

The second menu style is shared plates. Shared plates are similar to family style dining in a lot of ways (sharing dishes, often a more communal setting) but what makes it different is that , above all , the originality of the chef and the director of the beverage program really shine. The f ocus is on unique culinary options and ordering a variety of different items. G ene rally there's also a craft cocktail component which adds to this more upscale experience.

Smaller portions means that you're ordering more plates for the table. Much like family style you still get to choose a bunch of different things from the menu and try different style cuisine.

Because you get the opportunity to try many different preparations of food, it is a conversation starter that makes the dining experience more collaborative and dynamic. This i s a model where the chef gets to explore different, creative culinary dishes and ignore the boundaries.

The shared plate style began in the mid 1980s inspired by Spanish tapas or bar snacks craze that evolved during that time.

Something else to note about the shared plates style is that the server actually plays a much larger role than traditional family-style. Right off the bat, customers will likely have questions about ingredients, preparations or serving size. Because of this, the servers will have to be a bit more consultative with the initial ordering process. As the meal progresses and more plates are coming out, the servers may return more frequently – to check in, take empty plates and refresh cocktails.

This style of cuisine is more of an entertainment type of atmosphere where you're being entertained by the food as opposed to just going and getting a cheeseburger because you're hungry and you want to watch the game. In this scenario, the food is actually the main event.

Customers are prepared to pay a little bit more, and they know that it's quality over quantity here. You might only get one or two bites of something, but it may be totally different than anything you've ever had before.

The third type of menu is the sequential menu . The sequential menu doesn't care whether or not we share the food. However, it is keen to decide how we share our time.

With this temporal structure, the courses are more deliberately timed out from the kitchen. You may have your appetizer or first course, a possible second or third course, the main course and dessert. The sequential menu recommends that we dine in progression. It implies that if your dining partner is skipping a course, it could provide an awkward scenario where one person is eating and the other one's not.

It urges us to order in sync with each other. Within this structure of the sequential menu, there are also subcategories. For example the tasting menu, which is less common.

The tasting menu is where the chef dictates the entirety of the diner’s experience from the dishes served, the number of courses, the length of seating. The customer is just a spectator but they can charge a premium because of the accolades or popularity of the chef.

The price fixe is another variation of the sequential menu. There are a set amount of courses with a few different options for each course. The menu is still timed but not as flexible as the shared plates or the family style dining.

The last menu type is the flexible menu. The flexible menu allows customers to eat independently of each other. Customers can get a variety of different items delivered at the same time. A lot of restaurants now have their menu structured this way.

This is usually indicative of a casual dining experience or a chain like TGIF or Applebee's. This is a popular menu choice because it's designed to sell to the broadest demographic.

This type of menu concept makes it possible for any combination of people to go out and there's something for everyone. The flexible menu is uniquely positioned to take advantage of those impulse decisions to dine out, which happens a lot. You don’t need to plan much in advance, you can walk in and get a table without a reservation.

The Power of Menu Management

jennie@drivendigital.co (Jennie Alberto) — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 18:50:51 GMT

What does it mean to have a well-managed menu?

The world of menus has evolved significantly over the last few years. When people are dining out, they are doing so to enjoy a good meal and be present in the moment. A majority of people already spend a lot of time on our phones or computers, so when they’re sitting at the table in your restaurant and are handed a printed menu, this becomes an opportunity for further engagement.

Now more than ever the menu is a living, breathing document. It’s not not like a flyer or brochure that gets designed, promoted and then retired. The menu is constantly evolving based on market trends and seasonality. Sometimes you might even need to reinvent or refresh your entire concept.

Dialing in the logistics of managing the menu is vital for the health of your restaurant. It allows you to be able t o keep up with market trends , cost fluctuations and even pivot your business model if necessary.

It seems that every restaurant has their own process of updating menus. Many even decide to manage the entire process in-house.

There are benefits to this. You can easily make changes on the fly, print menus from a Word document and hand them out to customers the same day. However, there are unforeseen problems this method. One of those is consumer trust. When a customer is handed an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper from a home printer compared to a more durable professionally designed and printed menu, it leaves a lot to be desired. The menu should be seen as a significant sales tool by the restauranteur, and a method of communication to the customer.

You’ve already invested in this beautifully designed restaurant concept. Spending countless hours choosing the right color schemes, unique decor, signage and building materials that encapsulate your vision. This logic should transcend to the menu as well. The first thing that occurs when people sit down at your table is the server greeting them with the menu. They are then spending the first 5-15 minutes interacting exclusively with that same menu.

From the customers perspective, it can be like the first day of school. They don’t know what they are getting into. They are feeling out the scene of the entire establishment. They don’t know if this will be their favorite spot or if they will never come back. Your menu plays a crucial part in sculpting that first impression.

The printed menu is an opportunity to be an extension of your concept. The ability to interact with your menu can make it a fun and dynamic experience. Remember, in the digital world of social media and remote working, this may be one of the only times where the customer is truly present. They are there physically, surrounded by their friends and family at the table at your restaurant. The whole experience of sharing a menu with someone, going back and forth and deciding what to order is the most enjoyable part of the experience for a lot of people. When you give customers a printed menu you have a captive audience. This is a very precious commodity in today's world of TikTok and Instagram.

A well designed menu can also effectively reinforce your brand. It is an extension of your concept and it helps to sell the experience to your customer.

Having a menu that is consistent with its surroundings will build consumer trust. It can help customers feel confident spending a little bit more on certain items than they would if they were just given a piece of printer paper.

Why is menu management important?

Developing a streamlined menu management process, helps you react to market trends and price fluctuations. If market conditions change, you need to be able to roll out an updated menu as efficiently and quickly as possible. Having the mechanism in place to roll out a menu will translate to more margin. A lot of restaurants will put off making menu updates until “the official menu update” because they know that it's going to be a significant investment. Between having to update the POS, the website, the printed menu and 3rd party ordering apps you just live with the fact that chicken went up $3. You know that you update your menus twice a year, so you may not see the value in going through the process for a few minor changes. In the end, you eat the loss until your next seasonal change.

Managing menus is often a broken system, which is why a lot of folks gravitate towards the in-house solutions. Nobody prefers this method – not the restaurant owners, the wait staff or the customers. It's a last resort to keep the information up to date so they're not losing money.

How do you solve the problem of convoluted menu management process?

Working with a professional creative team to design your menu in a way that represents your concept and encourages the ordering of specific items is imperative. However, it doesn’t end there. Once the menu is finalized, it needs to be sent to print. The problem in most cases, is the disconnect between the printer and the designer. If there is any miscommunication between how the file was initially formatted and how it is intended to be printed, that could easily become a disaster when trying to roll them out in a timely matter.

In an ideal situation, the design and print team work in unison with each other from the start. Whoever is designing the menu should know the final output and print specifications before the first item is typed on the page. This allows for the process of getting the approved design over to the print facility to be seamless. There are no questions about size, colors or paper type because it was all established before the project begun. It’s vital to find the right graphic designer that understands the medium they are designing for.

So what happens when updates are needed months after you contracted the designer for the initial menu? Now, you have to reach out and hope that they have the availability to squeeze these changes in. Money loves speed, and when those prices change, you have to adapt.

The solution is to find a team dedicated to nothing but menu design, updates and printing. Here at Ten Cent Menu Club, we’ve constructed our entire process around solving the logistical issue restaurant owners face when needing to make menu changes and get them on the table in a quick and efficient manner. Our designers understand the nuances of printing, and facilitate the entire order, working closely with print production to ensure quality standards and deadlines are met.

Want to learn more? Click here to book a call with one of our specialists to see if we would be a good fit for your restaurant business.