How to Create a Profitable Restaurant Menu: 7 Easy-to-Implement Tips

Increase restaurant revenue by creating a perfectly optimized menu

What are the elements of a highly profitable restaurant menu? What can you do to help your menu convert better and increase the average check value? Answers to these questions and more in the guide below. Let's learn how to create a profitable restaurant menu!

How Many Menu Items Should a Restaurant Have to Be Profitable?

The answer to this question depends on the type of restaurant you run. For a quick-service restaurant, about six menu items should be enough. A fine dining restaurant can afford to expand its menu to up to ten items.

As you can see, in both examples, the menu is not too big. That's because a long list of dishes could suggest to your customers that you're focusing more on quantity than on quality. Additionally, they will have a harder time deciding what to order.

A small menu comes with lower costs due to the limited ingredients and minimal food waste, so if improving restaurant sales is what you're after, keep that menu short.

Here is a free downloadable small menu template to help you get started.

How to Create a Profitable Restaurant Menu: Tips & Tricks

1. Try to incorporate the most profitable restaurant menu items

When you're thinking about how to create a restaurant menu, you want to focus on high-profit margin items that are cheap and easy to make. Here are some examples of profitable menu items that you can incorporate into your menu:

  • Pizza: Perhaps the most versatile of menu items, with a simple base of dough and sauce that doesn't cost a lot. Offer a variety of toppings and the option to “make your own pizza” and you can turn simple dough into a flavor symphony.
  • Pasta: Similar to pizza, pasta has a simple, cheap base that you can add your own sauces and ingredients to. Not to mention you can charge more for signature recipes because of their perceived higher value.
  • Burgers: As long as you have a good supplier of quality ground beef, you can experiment with buns, toppings, and sauces to create a variety of burgers that customers will die to try.
  • Fried food: It's no wonder fast foods that sell fried food are so popular. Fast and easy to make, fried foods like onion rings, French fries, or fried pickles go together perfectly with other main dishes like burgers or sandwiches.
  • Soups: What are you going to do with all those vegetables that are nearing the end of their shelf life? Blend them together in a soup, of course. Most other ingredients that go into a soup are also pretty affordable, so you won't be spending a lot.

2. Make your menu readily available for customers to order online

If you're wondering how to increase restaurant profit, it's time to take your business online. How? By allowing customers to enjoy your food not just on location, but at home too.

Enable both pickup and delivery and allow hurried customers to also pre-order their food when they book a table at your restaurant. The more options people have to order your food, the better.

how to increase restaurant sales: start selling your food online

But what is the best way to make your menu available to customers online? Your restaurant website, hands down. 57% of customers say they prefer ordering directly from the restaurant.

To make your restaurant and menu easy to find online, it's important to focus on creating a website that's not just mobile-friendly and loads fast, but that's SEO-optimized for your location and cuisine.

Once you get your customers on the website, the goal is to get them to place an order. This is where sales optimization comes in. With a clear, visible Order button that's instantly accessible on all pages, customers are less likely to close the tab and move on to the competition.

Does all this sound too complicated? Worry not. You don't need design or development knowledge to create a high-converting website. You can use a restaurant website builder that helps you generate a sales and SEO-optimized website in minutes.

Follow this quick tutorial to set up your own website today:

3. Draw attention to your menu items with mouth-watering photos

You managed to bring customers all the way to your online menu. How do you increase the chances of them ordering? By hooking them in with images that will make their mouths water.

how to improve restaurant menu: add mouth-watering photos to each dish

An online menu gives you the flexibility to add a photo to each of your dishes. That way, the customer knows what they're getting, and you get the chance to woo them.

Consider investing in a professional photoshoot that will help your dishes shine. However, if you're just getting started and can't afford that, here's a beginner's guide to taking pictures of food for your menu.

4. Offers discounts and promotions for selected menu items

You might think this is counterproductive but if you want to learn how to create a profitable restaurant menu, you should know that the more you give, the more you'll get back.

Of course, that is not to say you should be giving your dishes away for free. However, smartly timed discounts of freebies, combined with a minimum order amount, can help you attract new and returning customers.

how to make a restaurant busy: offer promotions and discounts

Here are a couple of restaurant promotions you can try:

  • Discounts on the entire cart value if you reach a certain order amount;
  • Buy one, get one free deals for items that don't cost you a lot to make, like pizza;
  • A free soda or dessert if you purchase a menu that includes a main dish and a side dish;
  • A fixed-price meal bundle that includes an appetizer, main dish, dessert, and drink.

5. Enable customers to personalize their meals with choices & add-ons

More flexibility can encourage your customers to order more. Let's say they're craving a type of pizza that you don't currently have on the menu.

But if you give them the option to make their own pizza by choosing from a wide range of toppings, they can satisfy their craving without having to go to the competition.

From the type of crust or bun that they want to toppings, sides, or the size of the meal, customization is key to a happy, returning customer.

how to create a profitable restaurant menu

The online menu builder from GloriaFood offers you the freedom to add an unlimited number of choices and add-ons to every dish, to satisfy even the pickiest customer. Here's how:

6. Experiment with seasonal dishes

restaurant menu engineering: add seasonal menus to increase profits

You might be thinking: if you only have a couple of dishes on your menu, won't customers get bored with them? If they're fan favorites, probably not.

But even so, you can experiment now and then by changing some menu items according to season. This won't just keep customers interested, but it also comes with other benefits:

  • Seasonal menus can increase profits by 26%;
  • Seasonal ingredients are cheaper, so you will lower your food costs;
  • You can source the ingredients locally, which customers love;
  • Seasonal ingredients are usually tastier and healthier.

7. Do up-selling and cross-selling

Finally, a well-designed, well-optimized online menu also gives you the opportunity to automate up-selling and cross-selling. Instead of your servers having to do this as well, leave it to your menu to suggest items that might pair well together or that go well as a bundle.

Up-selling and cross-selling can help you increase the average order value, thus making your menu more profitable.

how to increase average spend per customer in restaurant: up-sell and cross-sell

How to Create a Profitable Restaurant Menu in Less Than 10 Minutes

Don't put off creating a menu that will make your restaurant stand out. You can have your mouth-watering menu up and running by tonight if you use the digital menu builder from GloriaFood.

It comes with free, built-in online ordering, so all there's left for you to do is publish the Order button on your website or get a sales and SEO-optimized website from us.

Here's a step-by-step tutorial to guide you in the process of creating your own profitable menu:

Final Thoughts

Menu profitability is something all restaurateurs aspire to. In an industry as competitive as the restaurant one, standing out can be tricky.

You can learn how to create a profitable restaurant menu through a simple combination of:

  • High-profit margin items
  • Online ordering
  • Mouth-watering food photography
  • Discounts & promotions
  • Meal personalization
  • Seasonal ingredients
  • Up-selling & cross-selling

Get your own free restaurant menu
with the all-in-one ordering system by GloriaFood

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