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Made to Order: The Art and Science of Menu Development
By Jessica Sidman, Washington City Paper
November 7, 2012
Pick up a menu the next time you’re out to eat, and oddsare your eye will drift over to the top right corner. Restaurateurs know this. That’s why they often list their most profitable dishes there.
As you continue looking through your options, you’ll first take note of the one or two items on top, then skim through the middle, and hone in on the last one. Boxes, colors, and bold text will draw you in. That signature dish people can’t get enough of, the one that doesn’t make a lot of money? Chances are it’s buried. (Restaurant owners know you’ll find it no matter where it appears on the page.)
That menu might not make it easy to fixate on cost, either. Instead of listing prices in a straight column, they may be offset, making it more difficult to scan down the menu and compare. Sometimes taking the focus away from price is as simple as leaving out the dollar sign or making the price a font size smaller.
