Start a Restaurant

The recipes that are chosen for your restaurant play a major role in your business success. It is not an easy task to choose a recipe. Each and every restaurant would have some specialty food for which the customers come back again and again. It will be because of the recipe of that particular food item. Many restaurants guard their secret recipes. Only the restaurant owner or head chef may know the complete recipe of that particular dish.

There are many categories of recipes available for a restaurant. Depending upon the season and the holidays in that locality there could be some seasonal addition to the menu items available.

The locality in which a restaurant is situated plays an important role in the selection of your recipes. People who frequent a particular area may be seeking a particular food item which could be native to that locality. Recipes of such foods should be included in your menu items if you want to retain those customers. These customers also tend to be more frequent, as they have a taste for a particular specialty that is served in the area. (more…)

Pizza menus are absolutely critical to the success, growth, and profitability of your restaurant. Many small business owners use full color menus as their primary method of marketing with great results. If you want to generate revenue quickly, find new customers before they become loyal to other local restaurants, and combat the marketing efforts of the chains in your area – you should carefully read this guide and develop a pizza menu marketing campaign of your own.

Pizza Menu Design

Pizza menu design is a creative process that varies widely from restaurant to restaurant. However, there is some science involved that can increase response, highlight key items, and improve your image – while increasing profitability!

Menu Items

• Categorize menu items by type: Pizza, Pasta, Salads, Subs, Beverages, etc
• List food categories in order: Appetizer – Soup – Salad – Entrée – Dessert
• Include a section on your menu for “Extras” such as bread sticks, extra cheese, etc. (This is a great way to increase sales and generate extra revenue on each order)
• Add some personality to your menu with specialty items
• Clearly list customer options for each category (ie: Club sandwiches served on choice of white, wheat, or rye)
• Use mouth-watering images of food items for each category when possible (It’s a good idea to use images of your menu items as a background graphic)
• Group your menu items into categories so that you can make pricing decisions
• Adjust pricing for each menu item depending on volume and profit (Once you know what an item costs to make, you subtract the cost from the selling price and you have the gross profit for each item on your menu)
• Never use “…” leading up to pricing – this makes your menu look like a price list
• Never use “$” signs on your menu – simply place the cost after the item description (This shifts the customer’s focus from the price to the food items (more…)

In today’s modern Chinese restaurants even a more traditional menu will come with English translations for many of the more common Chinese food terms. It is, however, always handy to have knowledge of some to the basic terms just in case you find yourself in need.

Here are eleven definitions that range from vegetables to duck for some of the more common items found in Chinese restaurants.

Choy = vegetable. Vegetables or Choy are found in many Chinese food dishes. This versatile ingredient can be found in stand alone dishes or accompanied by meat.

Dun = egg and is often found in dishes like Egg Foo Young where eggs or Dun are combined with a wide variety of accompaniments like rice, chicken, vegetables and bean sprouts.

Fon = rice and is most familiar in Fried Rice which comes with peas, carrots and pork or in sticky short grained white rice.

Gai = chicken and is a very adaptable ingredient to use in dishes like Cashew Chicken or Moo Shu Chicken where the chicken is thin sliced and served with vegetables, plum sauce and a thin pancake.

Har = shrimp and can be found in Peking Shrimp which can sometimes still be found by its traditional name of Beijing Far Jue Har.

Mien = noodle and is a soft warm noodle served with chicken or pork and vegetables. The all too common chow mien noodle is a crunchy version of the original. (more…)

When you’re a start-up business with a shoe-string budget, that photocopied sheet with a simple list of your dishes was enough to get by. But as your business grows and becomes more successful, the time will eventually come when somebody says, “Isn’t it time we got a more professional-looking menu?”

Yes, indeed, a full-featured, laminated menu just like the big restaurants use will definitely be necessary in most cases, if your restaurant is to be taken seriously. Even if you don’t go for the large, laminated book-style folding menu, there are many alternative styles to choose from.

To get one thing out of the way right away: you are probably better off getting a professional graphics designer for this number. Designing a menu has many skills in common with designing a website, and your restaurant may not have somebody computer-savvy enough to figure out how to do it, let alone the artistic skill to make it look good!

But if you are up to the challenge, you will need: A computer with design and editing software, a separate graphics program, digital photos of servings, clip-art, and either a printer capable of high-resolution color printing or a print shop which will publish your design. If you hired a logo designer to brand-mark your signs and logos throughout your business, you’ll want your company’s logo on the menu as well. Oh, yes, and a spell-checker! (more…)

More than half of all restaurant websites do not display vital information such as menus, pricing, parking information, a map and directions, and more on their website. I cannot think of one reason why any restaurant shouldn’t put these important details on their webpage.

Here are my top ten reasons why you as a restaurant owner need to make this information available to your customers – there are many more reasons, but I shortened the list because these ten seem to be the most important.

Number 10 – Happier customers the moment they enter your door

More of your customers will already know what they want to eat and how much it will cost. Customers will come in happier and ready because they know what to expect when it comes to the stressful things. Now you can surprise them, pleasantly, with other things like customer service, or food quality.

First impressions matter. When your customer walks in happier, your staff will be happier. When your staff is happier, they perform better. When they perform better, your customers leave happy too.

Number 9 – People are already searching for your restaurant

If you own a restaurant people are trying to find you online all the time. The quality of your virtual real estate will have a direct impact on how many people are attracted to your physical real estate. A website with very little or no information is poor virtual real estate.

Improve your virtual real estate by giving people what they want: menu, prices, payment policies, contact information, hours of operation, holidays, specials, coupons, and little details like the condition of your restrooms and where to park.

Number 8 – People expect it

I can type “calculus” into Google and learn it from home without a textbook. People today expect easy access to all sorts of information. It’s not called the “information age” for nothing! (more…)