Benefits of restaurant menu planning
Menu planning is perhaps one of the most important strategies for your restaurant business to have in place. It’s what your projections for profit, operating costs, customer satisfaction and customer retention are pinned to. As well as influencing customer choices towards high-margin items, a well-thought out menu is a blueprint for:
-
Consistent planning and the confidence that staff have everything needed to prepare the dishes and the knowledge to talk about them to customers.
-
Engagement and trust for customers with specific dietary and allergy needs.
-
More efficient, dynamic stock ordering and waste management processes.
-
Stronger relationships with suppliers and reassurance you’re getting the best quality ingredients.
-
Adapting to the seasons and the cost benefits of seasonal produce.
Treat it as you would any other strategy - spend time on it and balance what your customers want with your business’ operational costs and needs. This is an area where heads need to rule hearts. If you have high rates of customer retention and figures show that customers come to your restaurant for your Sunday lunches and big, flavourful seasonal dishes, you can be sure you’ve got your menu and pricing right and staff are capable and onboard with delivering it to customers who will return again and again.
Menu planning and analysis to ensure your menu has purpose
By understanding which dishes resonate with your customers and which aren’t performing well, you can optimise your offerings. This isn’t just about keeping popular items; it’s about ensuring every dish on your menu has a purpose - either driving profits or contributing to your brand identity. With menu analysis for restaurants, you can make fact-based decisions that ensure your menu is always working for you, improving efficiency, reducing waste, and making your restaurant more profitable.
Once your menu is fine-tuned, the next step is menu engineering, which helps you present your menu in a way that enhances the dining experience. A well-engineered menu can guide customer choices, encourage higher-value orders, and create a more memorable dining experience. It can even lead to increased sales by prompting your staff to recommend certain dishes based on customer preferences and seasonal trends.
Managing costs is another critical piece of the puzzle. By using a menu management system, you can track ingredient costs, portion sizes, and kitchen efficiency. This helps keep profit margins in check, reduces food waste, and ensures that your kitchen runs smoothly. Cost control isn’t just about cutting expenses - it’s about making your restaurant more sustainable and increasing long-term profitability.
What are the pros and cons of different restaurant menus?
Choosing a menu type that is compatible with your restaurant’s brand and is also capable of delivering your menu choices in the most profitable and cost-effective way has its challenges. All may deliver soft benefits but yet might not hit the mark with hard benefits that will drive the profit levels you’ve planned for. Let’s examine some of the most-used menu types and their pros and cons:
-
A la carte: Every item has its own price and it offers customers flexibility over the dishes they choose to deliver the experience they’ve anticipated. While this is great for cross-selling and up-selling, the wider choices presented by an a la carte menu may be overwhelming for customers, expensive and time consuming for restaurants.
-
Set menu: Ideal for helping customers to decide quickly, especially if your restaurant caters for busy city-centre lunchtime trade or wants to attract bookings for special, or seasonal occasions. As choices are static, it’s a more straightforward operating model whereby costs, portion size and convenience are more predictable. If customers know what they want and are not looking to experiment too much, it’s a stable format to work to. However, if options begin to feel a little too samey, customer numbers may drop off which will impact on profits. To counteract this you may need to run regular incentives which could have varying rates of success.
-
Du jour: Perfect for taking advantage of fresh, high quality seasonal produce, this menu format gives chefs the opportunity to get creative with flavours, textures and presentation. Pulling in customers with creative dishes combined with the subsequent savings on ingredients has its appeal but there is more work required upfront creating dishes that will provide a decent return.
-
Smaller vs larger menus: what’s the right fit? That’s when experienced waiting staff can step in, offering recommendations and guiding the decision-making process. When faced with a huge menu, customers can quickly feel overwhelmed - too many choices can lead to indecision or even regret, which could affect their overall experience and possibly lead to a negative review.
And while large menus give variety, they’re not always the best option, especially for smaller restaurants.Bigger menus often mean higher costs and can be more challenging for kitchens to manage, especially during busy services. On the other hand, a well-curated, smaller menu can offer distinct advantages: it allows your chefs to focus on fewer dishes, elevating the quality and consistency of each plate.
With a streamlined menu, kitchens can optimise ingredients and preparation times, reducing waste and ensuring high quality dishes. Smaller menus also make it easier to rotate seasonal items or incorporate locally-sourced ingredients, which can create a unique dining experience for your guests. Ultimately, a smaller menu can often lead to smoother service, a more enjoyable customer experience, and the kind of memorable dining that brings guests back for more.
5 key considerations for planning a restaurant menu
Menu planning is about more than just picking dishes; it’s about understanding and responding to a whole host of factors that can influence your restaurant’s success.
A menu management system for restaurants can be a helpful tool for industry professionals who want to make sure their menus are working for them. But it’s just one of the many strategies you can employ; so, what else can you do to ensure success with your menus?
Here are five key elements to consider when planning your menu:
1. Follow the seasons
The availability of seasonal ingredients can have a big impact on both the cost and quality of your dishes. When you use ingredients that are in season, you benefit from lower prices, better flavours, and higher quality produce. Seasonal dishes also appeal to customers looking for fresh and local food options.
On the flip side, out-of-season ingredients tend to be more expensive, which can shrink your profit margins. That’s where flexibility in your menu comes in; being able to adapt based on what's available can not only lower costs but also help you create a menu that feels fresh and exciting throughout the year. Incorporating seasonal changes also opens the door for creative marketing opportunities, like themed menus or seasonal specials, which can drive footfall during quieter periods.
If you’re not sure what is in season or are concerned that winter menus will be restricted to dishes such as ‘sprouts three ways’, then talking to your suppliers will help you make more informed choices that could also lower costs.
2. Source locally
If you’re lucky enough to have a business with excellent links to regional providers, buying local has many benefits. In addition to buying the best quality ingredients at the peak of their condition and flavour, buying locally stimulates the local economy and puts money back into the pockets of potential customers. Buy local schemes help raise awareness of businesses in your area who may have the products you want. Plus, having local knowledge gives you an insight into the quality of care put into making, growing, or rearing that product which takes some of the guesswork out of who you are buying from.
3. Focus for diners with allergies and dietary needs
Modern diners are more health-conscious and aware of dietary restrictions than ever before. In the UK, calorie labelling is now mandatory for many food outlets, meaning restaurants need to cater to this demand while staying compliant. Offering lower-calorie options or clearly marking allergen information helps build trust with your customers.
Using allergen and nutrition management software ensures your menu is inclusive, safe, and compliant with current regulations. This is hugely important for customers with allergies or parents with a child who has allergies where eating out can be stressful and not always like the special treat it’s meant to be. If you cannot answer customer queries about allergens with confidence and certainty, the customer will lose trust and walk away. That’s why having trained staff, information available online about allergens in dishes, and an option to pre-book can make eating out more accessible and relaxing.
For walk-ins, having allergen information readily available and in an easy to understand format makes choosing easier for the customer and causes less delays in the kitchen when ingredients need to be checked. Getting ahead to have all this information up to date and available doesn’t have to be time consuming. Restaurant menu food allergens software will generate this information for you.
Customers are more likely to return to a restaurant where they feel their dietary needs are understood and accommodated, so integrating this software into your menu planning can give you an edge in providing a seamless and safe dining experience.
4. Know your customers
While understanding your customers' dietary needs is essential, how well do you really know them beyond that? For restaurants with high-volume set menus, CRM systems can be invaluable, offering insights into customer preferences, visit frequency, and spending patterns. This data allows you to identify popular dishes and tailor promotions or loyalty rewards to keep your regulars engaged.
For smaller restaurants, CRM can complement personal interactions by tracking details you might miss – from preferred dining times, to favourite dishes – which enables you to craft a well-planned menu and dining experience that feels personal and thoughtful. Combining CRM insights with a genuine personal touch creates a memorable dining experience that keeps customers coming back.
5. Manage food costs
Prices for ingredients can fluctuate based on availability, market demand, or even external factors like weather conditions. Keeping a close eye on supplier prices and staying flexible with your menu can be powerful ways to manage these changes. For instance, you might consider sourcing locally or seasonally to benefit from more stable pricing and fresher ingredients. Bulk buying non-perishable items or partnering with local suppliers can also help to negotiate better rates over time. And if you’re looking for extra support, menu management software can track price changes in real time, allowing you to swap out expensive ingredients for affordable, in-season alternatives or adjust portion sizes to maintain profitability. This combination of proactive management and strategic software use can help you maintain a consistent profit margin, even when external factors are beyond your control.
How Access Procure Wizard can help
Access Procure Wizard is a fully integrated purchase to pay solution for restaurants which gives you access to all the features you need to plan a great menu, calculate costs and measure its impact against your key indicators.
At the front end of the menu planning process, our menu management system gives full visibility of menus, individual dishes and their calorie and allergen content. To provide even more reassurance, our allergy and nutrition technology is compliant with Natasha’s Law and calorie labelling legislation.
Optimising the profitability of your menu is key to your restaurant’s success, and our menu management system makes it easy by tracking stock and sales in one place.
Our integrated food waste management feature helps you minimise waste and maximise profits by keeping tight control over stock. Track usage in real-time, so you can prevent surplus from piling up, protect your bottom line, and reduce landfill impact, all in one efficient solution.
Ready to super-charge your menus?
In this article, we’ve looked at why menu planning is essential for your restaurant, and how the right menu is at the front line of influencing customer choices. We’ve discussed how software could transform your approach to menu engineering, and looked at how the right menu can make all the difference to your customers’ experience.
If you’re ready to see our software in action, why not take a few minutes to watch videos on our food waste and menu engineering software?
Ready to discover more? Read all about engineering tips to maximise profits and analysing your menu to see what’s working, or not working for your restaurant business.