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Psychology of food menu design

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Re: Psychology of food menu design

#41

Post by sillysaurus3 »

userbinator wrote: post #39
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.

Everyone has phones now. Ideally the menu would have a QR code that pops open the menu in your browser. All the items could be hyperlinks that show those huge pictures. That would be lovely.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#42

Post by stevekemp »

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!

Once upon a time I was posted to Tokyo to do some integration work. I had a great time working with Toshiba, and wandering around the city.

However a constant pain was the language (not a surprise) and my personal food tastes. I'll eat anything that isn't fish. Several days I'd just select random foods based on conversation with the staff, or pointing to lines on a menu because they looked fun. (That was quite fun, some days I'd get a starter, other days I'd get a desert, and I'd have no clue what I'd ordered!)

The only day I was absolutely certain I'd get great food was the day I found a place to eat that had pictures of the food. I thought I'd ordered a hamburger, but what actually arrived was a fish-cake in a bun. And that is when I learned that photo-based-menus were still not terribly useful.

If there had been a symbol of a "fish", a "cow", or a "chicken" that would have helped, but a photo can't tell you the difference between tomato-soup and chicken-soup, nor between a hamburger and a fish-cake!

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#43

Post by vyrotek »

userbinator wrote: post #39
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.

How about an AR menu? http://www.kabaq.io

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#44

Post by contingencies »

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."

In some countries (Thailand comes to mind) having photographs of every single menu item is actually a relatively common menu design.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#45

Post by contingencies »

titanix2 wrote: post #31
averagewall wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

You may enjoy our foodblog of Shenzhen and surrounds @ http://gastronomicsociety.in/shenzhen/

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#46

Post by anewhnaccount2 »

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."

In Romania, many restaurants have weights next to every dish.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#47

Post by intellix »

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…

Not sure I can say it's complete crap. There's a fairly cheap place that list items like: - Chicken - Pork

And when I'm looking at the menu I'm thinking... ugh, can't really find anything that sounds any good. The food comes and it's amazing.

I go to a fancyish place and when it's described better, it sounds amazing.

I feel what the article said about describing food should be common-sense tbh

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#48

Post by Erwin »

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."

Or calories. It's not impossible, but I've seen just one non-fast-food restaurant do it: Gauthier Soho in London: http://www.gauthiersoho.co.uk/menu-1.php

The tasting menu is 1785 Calories -- excluding wine.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#49

Post by ghaff »

averagewall wrote: post #24
SeoxyS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember eating at Oola in SF once and wondering what "hand-cut kennebeck potatos" would look like. The answer: just regular old french fries.

The idea that "hand-made" is somehow better never made sense to me. I can understand it for a sculpture or painting where the feelings of the artist are supposed to show through, but for chopping food, picking fruit, sewing clothes, or assembling furniture? Either machines can't yet compete with humans so "hand-made" just means "normal" or the human is going to do more inconsistent and unhygienic job than a machine.

I've had hand- and freshly-cut fries at a lot of places that to my taste don't stack up to McDonald's. (To be clear, I mostly despise McDonald's but find their fries to be better than those at many both chain and non-chain places with far better burgers.

Re: Psychology of food menu design

#50

Post by Grue3 »

contingencies wrote: post #44
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."

In some countries (Thailand comes to mind) having photographs of every single menu item is actually a relatively common menu design.

Yeah, and they aren't even particularly high-quality or appetizing photos. I think it's because tourists unfamiliar with Thai cousine would be pretty confused without them.

Some restaurants (e.g. in Japan) go even further and make actual-size, plastic models of the food. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_food#Use_by_Japanese_rest...

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