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.

Before you choose the best recipes for your restaurant, it is advantageous to monitor the area for what types of foods are the most popular and experiment with integrating menu items using these recipes into your repertoire. If your restaurant is aiming at providing different types of foods that people would try to experiment with, then you should have an experienced chef who can provide those varieties of dishes in your restaurant. For example, you could try more international recipes if your restaurant is situated in a place which is of interest to foreign tourists. Bringing in international chefs once in a while to spice up the recipes in your restaurant would also help to attract new customers.

Lydia Quinn writes for R&I Solutions, developer of Cost Genie, a leading restaurant costing software package. Visit CostGenie.com for a free demo. http://www.costgenie.com

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

Images

• Images should always be saved in high-resolution format
• Use images that are 300dpi whenever possible
• Make sure you use original images or images that are not copyrighted (you can find millions of inexpensive royalty-free images at istock.com)
• Always hire a graphic designer unless you are experienced in design

Printing

• Always print in full-color on glossy paper – your restaurant’s image will thank you
• Print in bulk to save money per piece – color printing is very affordable this way
• Choose an experienced pizza menu printer such as Taradel to obtain the best results, outstanding customer service, and the lowest prices…less than 4 cents per menu!

Paper

Choose a standard glossy paper durable enough to hold up to moderate usage. There is no need to use super-thick paper for takeout or pizza restaurant menus because it will cost you a fortune to ship and it will also increase production costs greatly. Choose a thin to medium thick paper depending on your budget and type of establishment.

• 60# Gloss – similar to a newspaper insert in your Sunday paper (this is the standard)
• 80# Gloss – similar to the cover of a magazine (think Time magazine’s cover)
• 100# Gloss – similar to a postcard or business card in thickness
• Choose a standard menu size such as 8.5×11 or 11×17 Need More Help Deciding? Request free pizza menu samples

Folding

• Tri-fold – six panel front and back menu
• Half-fold – four panel front and back menu
• Double Parallel Fold – six panel front and back menu with coupon strip

Bleed, No Bleed, and Other Printing Terms

• Bleed: Graphics/images extend all the way to the edge of the page
• No Bleed: Page has small white border of ¼ an inch when finished When designing a menu, you must design to bleed or no bleed specifications
• 4/0: Full color on one side only (the 4 stands for four color printing/full-color
• 4/4: Full color on both sides

Tracking Results

• Under-price a hot selling item. The general idea in doing this is that enough customers will buy additional items to offset the losses created by the under-pricing of the lead item. This is a great way to measure increases in response.
• Create a name for a product that is only on your menu – For example: “The Beast” Pizza …soon enough customers will call and ask for these uniquely named menu items.
• Use coupons – customers will clip coupons off of your menu and you’ll know what works
• Create a “limited-time” promotion specific to one particular menu

Please check back often for updates to this pizza menu guide.

We will be constantly updating this guide and incorporating input from pizza restaurants across the country! If you have you helpful tips for menu printing or design please email them to chris@taradel.com and we may include them in future updates to this guide.

Copyright © 2007 Taradel, LLC. All rights reserved.

This article is free and you may utilize this article on your website as long as you retain the following live links and author information:

Chris Barr is an experienced marketing professional and graduate of Christopher Newport University. He specializes in print advertising, business development, web business strategic positioning, and technical writing. For the lowest prices on printed flyers, newspaper inserts, brochures, menus, and postcards please visit http://www.taradel.com/pizzamenus?ref=1004

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.

Moo ghoo = mushroom. Moo Ghoo Gai Pan, which means sliced chicken and mushrooms, is an easily found dish on most Chinese restaurant menus.

Op = duck. Op or duck is not as common as chicken or pork but is a delicacy that is worth tasting.

Pien = sliced, proper slicing is key to Chinese cooking.

Suen = sour Tiem = sweet. Most often times you will see sweet and sour in the same dish such as Sweet and Sour Pork which contains pork, pineapple and green peppers in a sweet sauce.

Shauna Hanus is a gourmet cook who specializes in creating gourmet recipes. She has extensive experience cooking with easy to find grocery items to create delightful gourmet meals. She is also the publisher of a no cost bi-monthly gourmet newsletter. Her newsletter is always fun and informational packed with tips and trivia you can use everyday. Sign up for her newsletter and learn more about Gourmayeats Weekly Recipe Club at http://www.gourmayeats.com

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!

You’ll need to design a color scheme, come up with a style and theme, decide what sections the menu will include, and plan the layout. In addition to the main menu, you may want to create place-cards or table tents advertising seasonal specials and such. There are paper and publications standards in the printing industry, with standards designated as A4, A5, and so on, so check with the printing company who will be publishing your design.

This whole project doesn’t need to cost you an arm and a leg. Remember that simple, casual diners, coffee shops, cafes, and other small establishments do very good business without making a big production out of their menu. Here are some simpler design formats which almost anyone can learn to use:

HTML – Not many people think of it, but this is a document standard, after all. HTML, being the language of the World Wide Web, is capable of handling text in many sizes, layout formatting, and images. This is not recommended for fancy designs, but it can be enough to squeak by in some cases. Any web-page editing software can help you run up a layout. But there are some problems with this format: HTML can’t do custom fonts because they can’t display in your web browser, it isn’t good at keeping pages to a size standard, and is not powerful enough to handle more demanding layouts.

PDF – This is the most commonly used standard. The Portable Document Format is widely used for all purposes throughout the printing industry. A sophisticated PDF editor can design anything from a business card to a newspaper. It uses rigid page design and the editors for PDF have all of the standard sizes selectable from the menu. It can handle any font, image, and layout you throw at it, and is also likely to be preferred by the print shop. The only downside: PDF editors are expensive. Proprietary software patents have choked out most of the competition, resulting in a highly monopolized industry.

SVG, XML – This is the second most commonly encountered standard, and in fact much of the printing industry is starting to use this format more widely. They are each capable of the full set of PDF features, and even add some new tricks that PDF can’t do. SVG stands for “scalable vector graphics” and XML is the parent of HTML, being the original document mark-up language.

SVG and XML combine in the same document. SVG is not only a means of producing a document, but is a graphics language as well, so you can draw in it! Software for editing SVG and XML documents is widely available as free and open source software, and in every case the free software is at least 99% as powerful as the expensive commercial version. The only downside here is that it takes some extra learning to use and understand SVG and XML. For example, web browser have been able to render SVG and XML elements for years, and yet you don’t see much of it on the Internet, because there just aren’t that many people skilled enough to use it. You don’t exactly have to have a computer science degree – but it won’t hurt!

Whatever document format you use, you will have many considerations in planning your layout. If you use photographs, you will need to have a professional photographer to snap photos of your food and provide you with the images in digital format so you can include them in the menu. You will want to pick a font and layout consistent with your restaurant’s atmosphere and your business image.

You will want it to be attractive as possible, but not be so “busy” that it is difficult to read. And using clip-art is convenient and easy, but will make your design look like a tired cliche. Using custom-made graphics, on the other hand, will require digital graphics design skills that aren’t too common in the general public. You might also want to provide versions in different languages, and a braille menu for the visually impaired.

It is quite challenging for someone with little design experience to undertake this task; there is much more to design that is left out of this article. Remember that menus define your restaurant; it is the first product that your guests will get to see. Making a good impression here is important.

Freelance writer for over eleven years.

Wholesale Chef Coats Restaurant Uniforms

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!

Restaurants that do not share important information such as pricing and menus are perceived as “behind the times.” When a customer cannot find details about your restaurant fast, they may feel like your establishment is backward or just too cheap to invest in something as important as a good website.

Number 7 – It will save you time (money)

People take more time to order when they are unfamiliar with the menu. That means an employee must wait while the customer decides. If the employee has to wait an extra minute for the customer it adds up, especially if that employee has to wait for ten or twenty customers during the course of a shift.

Your employee can use those twenty minutes for better tasks than standing around waiting. Imagine if just half of the indecisive people are ready because they looked at the online menu first. Your employee saves ten minutes. Over the course of a year that employee will now spend only forty hours waiting for customers to decide what they would like to order instead of eighty hours!

That saves you about three hundred dollars a year per employee (At $7.50 per hour).

This is just one way that time is saved. Employees will spend less time answering questions and phone calls about the menu, payment, parking, and other concerns that your website should address.

Number 6 – Customers will be more satisfied

With improved efficiency, faster order taking, and less mistakes customer satisfaction will increase. Customers are happier when their expectations are fulfilled. The information you provide on your website creates those expectations. By providing more information, customers will be more satisfied.

Number 5 – People will find your website more easily

One internet study suggests that websites with a number one rating on a Google search get up to three hundred times more traffic and sales than other websites.

By adding more information such as a menu, prices, and parking information a website will achieve a better search engine ranking which means people find your website more easily and you will get more customers.

Since the website now has more information available, people will post more links that refer to it. More linking also means a better search engine ranking.

Finally, with better content your visitors will be more likely to visit again, tell others about their visit, and spend more time on your site with each visit. Here are the three main advantages to this:

a) More traffic means a higher rank.

b) Advertisers on your website pay more money for more traffic.

c) They also pay based on how long visitors stay on your site.

Number 4 – It will improve your ratings

Ratings will be better when your restaurant is filled with people who chose your restaurant with all the facts. Because of your superior service, improved efficiency, and happier customers – ratings will improve. In addition your restaurant will experience unhappy customers less frequently since the customers who fill your tables know what to expect.

Restaurants with unpleasant surprises may unknowingly create a bad rating nightmare.

For example your unpleasantly surprised customer may go home, get on the internet, and find the twenty or so databases where your restaurant is located. Each of these databases has minimal information such as phone number, address, a map, sometimes a sentence describing the restaurant, and a star rating.

Surprised customers can rate your restaurant very unfavorably in all twenty of these databases! How many potential customers will be lost as a result of one customer who was unpleasantly surprised with some detail of your establishment?

By giving out vital restaurant information like pricing policies, and a menu – you can avoid more of these unpleasantly surprised customers.

Number 3 – More tourists will choose your establishment

When planning a trip most people now do some kind of online research. They are excited to find out where they will be staying and what food choices they have. They know that they will only eat exactly seven meals out on this trip and they want to make those meals a special experience usually.

Out-of-towners choose those seven restaurants based upon several factors. Restaurant ratings and the amount of available information on the website are two factors that probably influence their decision the most, and by placing your menu, prices, parking information and more online, more people visiting from another place will choose your establishment.

Number 2 – Customers Keep Coming Back

When customers are satisfied, they come back again. Online menus, prices, and more improve customer satisfaction and patrons will keep coming back.

Number 1 – You will make more money

Better customer service, improved efficiency, and high ratings add up to making more money.

Nathan Engquist is an editor, consultant, and writer on Wiki-Eatia and co-owner of Fradey Cat Web Solutions.

Wiki-Eatia is a free community where restaurant owners and enthusiats can add, and edit restaurant information. Features of each restaurant include ratings, menu, prices, images, a map, parking information and every detail imaginable. The goal of the website is to make it simple for every restaurant owner on earth to showcase their restaurant for free. Visit now to add your restaurant or find one. http://www.wiki-eatia.com

Fradey Cat Web Solutions is a web design and development firm dedicated to assisting companies with their internet marketing efforts. The company offers top quality websites and consulting soutions for half the average industry cost. If you would like help or advice building your restaurant website, marketing campaign, or search engine optimization please visit the website. http://www.fradeycat.com