Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners
With fierce competition out there and new restaurants popping up every day, it’s important to make the most of each and every customer that comes through your door. Luckily, as a restaurateur, you have a tool that would make any marketer jealous — you place an advertisement on the table in front of every customer who takes a seat (if you’re running a quick-service restaurant, you may have an entire billboard to work with!).
Research by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” suggests that the average person makes more than 200 decisions about food every day, many of them unconsciously, including the choices made from reading menus.
Now, 200 choices may seem like a lot, but once you’ve got a customer reading your menu, these 4 simple tips will ensure that you’re maximizing the value you get out of your menu.
1. Remove the dollar sign
A Cornell study published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that at an “upscale-casual” restaurant, diners spend on average 8% more when the dollar sign is excluded from menu prices.
Sheryl Kimes, a Professor of Hospitality Management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration explains this phenomenon writing that, “references to dollars, in words or symbol, reminds people of the ‘pain of paying’”. This simple technique can have a huge impact!
2. Anchor the price
Anchoring price is the idea that having one or few items priced much higher than most items causes customers to be more satisfied with the price. Imagine a restaurant menu that has a $115 lobster entree, while most customers won’t order the lobster, it sure makes the $70 steak look like a bargain! According to William Poundstone, author of “Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), having a steeply priced item on the menu, “makes everything else near it look like a relative bargain.”.
Anchoring works with lower values as well, for example, a quick-service cafe may price one smoothie at $14 beside a list of other smoothies priced between $7-$9 — this can have the same effect in making the ‘regular’ priced smoothies look like great value.
3. Don’t skimp on the details
When it comes to pricing menu items, different cent values can have a serious impact on how customers perceive the value and quality of your food.
Research suggests that prices ending in .95 cents seem to be the sweet spot where customers feel they are getting equal value and quality. Whereas alternatives like a .99 cent ending provoke feelings of value but may cause customers to doubt the quality.
If you’re interested in reading a real-life case study and analysis performed at a local restaurant chain, check out this article.
4. Use descriptive language
According to research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, descriptive menu labels raised sales by 27%, compared to food items without descriptors. That’s nothing to sneeze at! To back it up, further research from Cornell University revealed that items described in a more beautiful way are more appealing to and popular with customers.
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If you’re interested in learning more and to receive a free price consultation send us an email here: support@gravy.ai
