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Psychology of food menu design

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Re: Psychology of food menu design

#31

Post by titanix2 »

averagewall wrote: post #22
jpatokal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, this is a sign of a bad Chinese restaurant practicing what I call "matrix menus": you've got one array of sauces (soy, oyster sauce, teriyaki, sweet and sour, satay, etc) and one of proteins (chicken, beef, shrimp, salmon, tofu, etc). The menu is product of multiplying these, even when the result is completely absurd from the POV of the original culinary tradition (say, satay shrimp or teriyaki to…

Chinese restaurants intended for Chinese people serve food that westerners don't like or find repulsive. "For Chinese people" doesn't mean better, it means better for people who're used to that and worse for people who aren't.

I guess it's just bad Chinese restaurants regarless of who they target. I personnally rank Chinese food as high as French one; these people really are genious when its come to cuisine.

Two of the best restaurants I ate at were in Taiwan (Kaohsiung) and almost everything was delicious. The only challenging dish for a foreigner was chicken-feet (jijiao) and century eggs (pidan). But I was warned beforehand by the people who invited me and I tried them for the fun. But hey, it was pricy for the country (25€/person) so I think the problem lies in the lack of expensive Chinese restaurant in the West.

Edit: if you want to try a good Chinese restaurant and do not mind travelling a bit, this one was very good: http://www.dfy.com.tw/

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#32

Post by grabcocque »

One thing the article doesn't mention is the use of obscure words in dish descriptions.

Am I more or less likely to order something that contains endive, or is a ponzu? I don't know what either or those things are, so I'd have to whip out wikipedia to find out. Based on your leanings you're either way more, or way less likely to order something that you've never heard of before.

In my case it's more, though the internet tells me that endive is licorice-flavored cabbage which sounds disgusting so...

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#33

Post by Mikeb85 »

averagewall wrote: post #25
Mikeb85 wrote: post #3

Lol, this article is complete crap. No restaurant wants you to not order something. What they want is you, coming in the door, having a good time and ordering a bit of everything. Now if some restaurants have items they feel differentiates them from other, they want you to have some of that. But there was never an instance where, when I designed a menu (worked as a cook/chef in some pretty high end places, including…

Criticizing people's judgement based on their perceived qualifications or experience is offensive and often wrong. Just because you did something doesn't mean you understand it better than someone who didn't do it. It can actually hamper understanding by narrowing your viewpoint or causing you to overvalue your knowledge. I see this all the time among poorly educated people - "I've driven trucks for 20 years, I know…

First, the article is from a consultancy. Not even one that specialises in restaurants, but one that specialises mostly in retail it seems from their website.

Now their arguments:

> Consider the following example from a restaurant in New York. The sweet spot contains two expensive seafood platters (plateaux de fruits de mer). With the added illustration and a touch of color, these items are designed to draw attention to themselves.

This part is correct. They obviously want to bring attention to their seafood choices.

> You can probably guess that these platters bring in higher profits than some of the other menu items.

This part is so far off it's not even funny. Seafood isn't cheap. Seafood platters don't have good food cost. There's no starches, no vegetables to balance the cost of the protein. The point of drawing you to these items is because seafood itself is a draw - it's the draw that brings you into the restaurant itself. And hopefully you get some bubbly, maybe some sides, or maybe you're just having oysters before your steak and red wine.

> Price It Right

You don't say...

Anyhow, restaurants are about hospitality. There's no funny psychology. Yes you want nice menus and yes you want nice descriptions. You want to bring in diners who order a bit of everything, with some alcohol. You cater to some tastes, offer new tastes, bring in novel items, at the end of the day you do want balanced ordering though, so as to have minimal spoilage. Your concept, decor and cuisine should differentiate, prices should reflect your market, but again, there's no funny business as far as menus go. Simpler is better, menus with less than 15 items are in vogue right now.

As for broadening my horizon - 10 years of high end cooking, 5 years serving and bartending, and I went to school for econ/business. I'm obviously here to learn about things like programming and technology, and I'd pretty good with both of those, having done CS courses and used various stats packages and languages throughout school. Restaurants do embrace modernity (POS systems keep track of sales mixes, and we'd examine them every single day, keep track of various trends, including past years, etc...), but what they don't embrace is leeches like consultants who prey on the mom and pop diner who aren't savvy enough to know the difference.

Also, the article was a pretty sad analysis of menu development and pricing. Might as well have been an ad in the corner of an industry magazine.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#34

Post by blorsh »

jpatokal wrote: post #18
sotojuan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (and everyone's) local Chinese food restaurant has over fifty items in their menu. I'm very boring when it comes to food so I always get the same thing but I've always been curious about how many of the more esoteric (for a Chinese restaurant) items are sold and can be made on the spot - I've seen steaks and even Italian food in some menus.

Generally speaking, this is a sign of a bad Chinese restaurant practicing what I call "matrix menus": you've got one array of sauces (soy, oyster sauce, teriyaki, sweet and sour, satay, etc) and one of proteins (chicken, beef, shrimp, salmon, tofu, etc). The menu is product of multiplying these, even when the result is completely absurd from the POV of the original culinary tradition (say, satay shrimp or teriyaki to…

This is a good Chinese restaurant, but you hint at a way to improve the menu. The menu should be a grid, properly displaying the matrix.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#35

Post by chrischen »

dguo wrote: post #28

I wish every menu would come with pictures for every item, if only because portion sizes are so unpredictable. Yelp has pictures sometimes, but they're crowdsourced, so it's usually only the popular items that have them. Maybe the cost of getting good pictures and making longer menus is a factor. Or maybe it's just another part of the "psychology of food menu design."

I’ve always wondered why they don’t do this in America.

I would surmise it’s one of the reasons trycaviar.com took off the way it did. It swept people from sites like grubhub that had lower quality restaurants with no pics.

In Japan it doesn’t even end with pictures—most restaurants have realistic physical models of their dishes!

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#36

Post by chrischen »

jpatokal wrote: post #18
sotojuan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (and everyone's) local Chinese food restaurant has over fifty items in their menu. I'm very boring when it comes to food so I always get the same thing but I've always been curious about how many of the more esoteric (for a Chinese restaurant) items are sold and can be made on the spot - I've seen steaks and even Italian food in some menus.

Generally speaking, this is a sign of a bad Chinese restaurant practicing what I call "matrix menus": you've got one array of sauces (soy, oyster sauce, teriyaki, sweet and sour, satay, etc) and one of proteins (chicken, beef, shrimp, salmon, tofu, etc). The menu is product of multiplying these, even when the result is completely absurd from the POV of the original culinary tradition (say, satay shrimp or teriyaki to…

Large restaurants can pull off larger menus, but I agree if it is a small restaurant with a big menu some hacks are going on.

That being said in general Chinese restaurants tend to be able to pull off a larger variety of items with a smaller kitchen.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#37

Post by dswalter »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #6

I hated the menu where the prices were spelled out, e.g. "NINE FIFTY" and "THIRTEEN". Yuck.

One of the rules that goes with more expensive seeming menus is that you should pretend partial dollars don't exist. THIRTEEN is tolerable. NINE FIFTY is off-putting.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#38

Post by userbinator »

sotojuan wrote: post #17
brndnmtthws wrote: post #13

I prefer places that have only a few items on the menu. I especially like restaurants which only have one menu item, and focus on making that one dish the best it can be. Too many menu options just causes anxiety and analysis paralysis. If you go to a fancy restaurant like the French Laundry, they only have a prix fixe menu with several courses (usually at least 5). You get what you get (although they usually have su…

My (and everyone's) local Chinese food restaurant has over fifty items in their menu. I'm very boring when it comes to food so I always get the same thing but I've always been curious about how many of the more esoteric (for a Chinese restaurant) items are sold and can be made on the spot - I've seen steaks and even Italian food in some menus.

Yes, I can confirm that Chinese restaurants tend to be like that --- and especially when it's a local restaurant, I really like the fun of being able to think "what will I try this time?"

Another thing about them, that stands in stark contrast to the examples in the article, is that their menus also tend to be far less "designed" and more utilitarian; they're often not much more than tables of items with names/descriptions and prices. Here's an (very badly translated, but you can see the format) example: http://jasonandcodi.com/images/20070119/bigchunk.jpg

I actually prefer that style more, even before I read the article, perhaps because I have a subconscious and instinctive aversion to menus "Playing With Your Mind" --- which a highly stylised, price-deemphasising, limited-choice design seems to imply.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#39

Post by userbinator »

dguo wrote: post #28

I wish every menu would come with pictures for every item, if only because portion sizes are so unpredictable. Yelp has pictures sometimes, but they're crowdsourced, so it's usually only the popular items that have them. Maybe the cost of getting good pictures and making longer menus is a factor. Or maybe it's just another part of the "psychology of food menu design."

The pictures would have to be extremely large for that to be useful, or each item very distinctive, since otherwise a lot of food tends to look like "blob of stuff on a dish". I think listing the ingredients would be far more helpful to understand what you're getting.

...and the obligatory "items may not be exactly as shown" disclaimer would make pictures not reliable for portion sizes either.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#40

Post by QAPereo »

chrischen wrote: post #35
dguo wrote: post #28

I wish every menu would come with pictures for every item, if only because portion sizes are so unpredictable. Yelp has pictures sometimes, but they're crowdsourced, so it's usually only the popular items that have them. Maybe the cost of getting good pictures and making longer menus is a factor. Or maybe it's just another part of the "psychology of food menu design."

I’ve always wondered why they don’t do this in America. I would surmise it’s one of the reasons trycaviar.com took off the way it did. It swept people from sites like grubhub that had lower quality restaurants with no pics. In Japan it doesn’t even end with pictures—most restaurants have realistic physical models of their dishes!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/meet-makers-plastic-foo...

Japan definitely has a great tradition of see before you eat.

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