Presentation is key. And when it comes to your restaurant, no presentation is arguably more important than the presentation of your menu.

The difference between one sale and the other can oftentimes be entirely tied into how a menu item is described or presented. It might be the imagery, the words, the font, the price, and virtually anything in between.

Let’s take a look at a few menu tricks to boost sales.

It’s all in the Menu Design

Your menu needs to flow so that customers are carefully carried from Point A to Point B. Plenty of menus are jumbled messes. A skillfully designed menu takes the customer on a journey throughout their meal – a journey designed to maximize profits.

The National Restaurant Association presents an exemplary philosophy on how menus should be designed, suggesting inspiration from newspaper design, “which puts the most important articles at the top right of the front page.” This is where you’ll position both specials and items with higher profit margins.

Ever been at a restaurant before and seen a bright star next to an entree? How about a box? Maybe a “signature” section? These are some of a few common visual aides that operators use to get customers buying the most profitable items. Highlighting these items places your customers attention on the items you want to sell the most of.

Here’s a few extra tricks to keep in mind.

  • Take off the dollar sign ($). Doing this psychologically dissociates buying food from using actual money, in the consumer’s mind. Basically, it keeps them from thinking too hard about their bank account.
  • Use Market Price (MP) when needed. For items that fall on the more expensive side of things, listing market price rather than the actual price can make customers more willing to shell out on those exclusive dishes.
  • Use vivid imagery for the items you really want to sell. According to research from Gregg Rapp, over at Menu Cover Depot, sales of a specific menu item can be boosted by as much as 30% when using a photo.
  • Set a price trap. By cleverly positioning your most expensive items around one of your cheaper, but more profitable items, you make the profitable item much more appealing.

Sell More With CoGoBuzz

CoGoBuzz, our fully-featured marketing service, digitally promotes your restaurant directly to customers’ mobile devices.

Taking advantage of WiFi, SMS, and Email solutions, our service engages customers both in-store and out. Through WiFi, CoGoBuzz displays an interactive landing page on your customers’ mobile devices when they login to the HotSpot, letting them check out your restaurant’s menu digitally! Via SMS, you’ll take advantage of a powerful, text-based loyalty program. We even produce full customer profiles and integrate them with your favorite marketing list.

To top that off, CoGoBuzz hooks you up with automatic Facebook followers, repeat customers, and more! Check out the rest of our website to learn more.

What menu tricks do you use to increase sales? Sound off in the comments!