YOUR MENU

Creating your menu

The purpose of your menu is to make your food sound so appealing that your customers cannot resist ordering! It should be put together based on customer needs (as discussed earlier) to ensure that you are offering customers what they want, when they want it, at a price they are willing to pay. Your menu should be professional looking and clean with mouth-watering descriptions of your meals.

Small-scale catering operations will benefit from having a menu. For example: professional looking sandwich or pie menus are simple and effective at increasing sales. Larger-scale catering operations will require menus that are more extensive, with meals made up from the main meat categories of beef, chicken, lamb and pork. Vegetarians also need to be accommodated; research estimates that 5–7% of the adult population are vegetarian (Key Note Research 2004, National Diet & Nutrition Survey 2001); and, as almost 2 in 5 women and 1 in 6 of men are dieting most of the time (Mintel report 2004), ‘healthy option meals’ also need to be incorporated in your menu.

Separate menus

Separate menus can be used to target different customer needs for example: breakfast menus, quick bites, light meals, and children’s menus. These can be displayed at different times of the day or week when you are targeting different types of customers.

Menus for special occasions such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter and Christmas also need to be planned and promoted well in advance.

The new major food trends – ‘grazing’ and ‘food sharing’

There are two new food trends that are growing in popularity –‘grazing’ and ‘food sharing’:

• Grazing: this is where people choose to eat several smaller meals outside the traditional meal times. (To benefit from the grazing trend) offer light bites and snacks all day and evening.)
• Food sharing: this is where groups of friends order food that can be shared. (Provide finger food such as nachos, combos, tapas etc.)

Both trends require simple, easy to prepare food, ideally suited to a pub food menu. Ensure that your food operation takes advantage of these new trends!

Beer and food matching

Beer and food matching is a relatively new innovation which aims to promote beers that compliment different dishes (much in the same way as wine is sometimes sold).

In practice, this requires you to suggest complimentary beers with each dish on your food menu or have a separate ‘beer list’ describing the draught and bottled beers you stock, together with a description of their qualities and the types of food they compliment.

The general principle is to balance the intensities of food and beer, for example:

• Delicate beers with delicate foods.
• Strongly flavoured beer with strongly flavoured foods.
• Sharp tasting beers with sharp tasting foods.
• Sweet tasting beers with sweet foods.

However, there are occasions when beers and foods with contrasting flavours work well too.

Here are some basic suggestions for matching beer and food:

Food	Beer style
Aperitifs	Hoppy, dry, cold lagers
Shellfish	Dry porters and stouts
Fish	Wheat beers
Chicken	Malty lagers
Red meat	Full bodied ales
Spicy foods	Hoppy pilsners
Cheese	Strong, hoppy ales
Desserts	Speciality honey, fruit or chocolate beers or wheat beers

Signature dishes

A signature dish is a dish that the public associates with you and your pub. As well as tasting superb, it is unique and interesting and gets people talking about it (and you). Be creative and develop a menu with a signature dish of your own. It should be in keeping with the type of pub that you run and your target customers. It could be a simple dish with your own special twist such as mussels cooked in wheat beer, or a more unique offering like kangaroo steaks.

Signature dishes need not be limited to menus in pubs that offer premium dining; even sandwich menus can include a ‘signature sandwich’, and pie menus can include an extra special pie that’s out of the ordinary. All that is needed is a bit of creativity!

Individual touches

There are lots of little touches that will help to set you apart from your competitors, such as offering a range of homemade breads, chutneys or salad dressings, providing a selection of real teas, including a quality chocolate with every coffee, a choice of relishes with every pie order, or several types of mash potatoes. Try to think of little touches that you can incorporate into your food offering. No matter how limited your menu, there are simple things you can do to make the meal more memorable for the customer and set yourself apart from the competition. They also add value that the customer may be willing to pay a little more for.

Avoid ‘menu fatigue’

However good your menu, regular customers can quickly become bored of the same dishes. They may then look elsewhere for new food experiences. Specials boards are a simple low cost way of keeping your menu varied (as well as using up surplus ingredients). Specials boards can also be used to display seasonal menus and special occasion menus.

The alternative is to change your menu periodically. Many of the large pub food operators change their menus every six months in an effort to keep their customers interested in what they have to offer. This can be a costly process, with menu reprints and advertising. It also carries the risk of alienating some customers whose favourite dishes are removed from the menu. However, the major pub food operators believe that the benefits outweigh the costs and risks associated with the change.

Be aware of ‘menu fatigue’ and monitor the popularity of different dishes and overall food sales. Consider making changes to your menu ‘at least’ on an annual basis, keeping the popular dishes and replacing slow-selling dishes with new ones. Allocate time, and budget for the cost of reprinting menus and monitor the impact of your new menu after it has been introduced.

Menu layout

The average customer only takes 3 to 4 minutes to look at a menu, so first impressions and a clear layout are vitally important. Rather than simply listing all your dishes, break up your menu into distinct food categories, containing no more than 6 items per category. Use the top right-hand portion of each section or page to place your high-profit dishes as this is where customers’ eyes will be automatically drawn to when reading a menu.