SITHKOP002 PLAN AND COST BASIC MENUS

• SITHKOP002 Plan and cost basic menus

• Identify customer preferences
• Plan menus
• Cost menus
• Write menu content
• Evaluate menu success
TOPIC 1 – IDENTIFY CUSTOMER
PREFERENCES
Identify current customer profile for the food business
◦ Any hospitality worker worth their salt will be able to tell you that customers and being able to keep
them happy are the most important parts of the hospitality industry
◦ Having happy customers means repeat business which leads to more income for the business
◦ There are numerous different techniques and guides on how to keep customers happy
A restaurant’s customer profile
A customer profile is a generalised overview of the potential customers and demographics
◦ The best way to create a customer profile is to set up a series of questions that can be given to your
customers to find out what they do and do not like about the business
◦ The entire customer profile process is important in determining who the most frequent customer is
Sources of information on current customer profile and food
preferences
You can gain information on your current customer profile from a variety of sources, such as:
◦ Sales records
◦ Feedback
◦ Information database

The best source of information on your customer profile, however, is your customers themselves
Analyse food preferences of customer base
Knowing your customer profile will allow you to evaluate their food preferences far more easily
◦ Your customers’ food preferences play an important role in what you choose to put on your menu
◦ Most food preferences will relate to:
◦ Contemporary eating habits
◦ Cultural and ethnic influences
◦ Popular menu items
◦ Quick service foods
◦ Seasonal dishes
◦ Variety of food products
TOPIC 2 – PLAN MENUS
Generate a range of ideas for menus for dishes or food production ranges, assess their merits,
and discuss with relevant personnel
◦ Creating the best menu for your restaurant is a process that takes time and proper planning
◦ To assist with creating the best menu for your restaurant, you will need to consider a few different areas
that you will use to determine the menu, including:
◦ The overarching theme
◦ Location
◦ Customers
Choose menu items to meet customer preferences
As already mentioned, choosing menu items that meet customer preferences is important for
producing a successful business
◦ The biggest factor that determines the size of the menu will be how comfortable and capable the
kitchen team is at creating the menu items in the required timeframes
◦ Once you have decided on a plan for your menu, the menu size, tested the dishes and created the menu
from start to finish, you should invite relevant personnel from your restaurant to taste each one giving
merit where required
Identify organisational service style and cuisine, and
develop suitable menus
One important piece of information that you need when working in a restaurant is the service
style that it uses
◦ The service style determines the layout, menu, stock, food prices, and décor of the restaurant
◦ Fast Food
◦ Fast Casual
◦ Fine Dining
◦ Casual Dining
◦ Once you have identified the service style of your restaurant, you should be able to set the menu to not
only suit the customer but also the style of restaurant
Include a balanced variety of dishes or food production
items for the style of service and cuisine
When you are creating the menu for your restaurant, you will need to create a core number of
dishes that have a balanced variety
◦ One of the keys to a successful menu is having dishes on it that have a variety of different colours,
textures, cooking styles, flavours, etc. to provide a well-rounded variety of menu items
◦ Listed below are tips you can implement to assist with a good variety and balance to the dishes that you
serve
◦ Avoid food fads
◦ Variety
TOPIC 3 – COST MENUS
Itemise proposed components of included dishes or food production items
◦ Creating the menu and the items that are on it is the easy part
◦ The hard part comes when you have to work out how to create them and what ingredients will go into
each dish
◦ Itemising the components of each dish involves creating a list of all the required ingredients, which can
then be transferred onto a standardised recipe card, which will be used to create the dish and its
components
Calculate portion yields and costs from raw ingredients
Food cost is the difference between the cost it takes to produce each menu item and the price
that it is being sold for
◦ Generally, food cost should be around 20 - 25%.
◦ The idea behind the food cost is it gives you information on how much you need to sell a dish for in
order to cover the costs of creating it, which includes staffing costs and overheads (power, gas, water)
Portion yield
Portion yield is the amount of each menu item batch broken down for an amount of people
◦ The way to do this is to weigh the dish, determine the amount of serves per recipe, and then break
down the batch to the right amount to of portions for the amount of people that you need to serve
◦ Butcher’s test
◦ Standard measures
◦ Standard yield tests
Assess cost-effectiveness of proposed dishes or food
production items and choose menu items that provide high
yield
The cost-effectiveness of your proposed dish is the ability to generate a high amount of income
for minimal expense
◦ This cost-effectiveness is a desired trait in menu items, as having a menu item that is popular and
successful that costs you next to nothing to create is the perfect scenario
◦ You will be able to determine the cost-effectiveness of your dishes by performing yield tests and cost
analysis to determine what it costs to make the dish
◦ A high contribution to profit margins means that the dish is very cost effective
Price menu items to ensure maximum profitability
As mentioned the food cost is important in determining the price that you will need to serve
each dish for
This is important to calculate for each menu item to give you the price that will give you the
most profitability at a reasonable price
Refer to the resource for the formula for costing your menu items
TOPIC 4 – WRITE MENU CONTENT
Write menus using words that appeal to customer base and fit with the business service style
◦ At the heart of all restaurants is the menu
◦ It is what entices customers to try out your new restaurant, and it’s what keeps them coming back
◦ The layout, descriptions, and design are all important parts of creating a restaurant menu, as is proper
food cost for menu prices
◦ Above all else, you will want to make sure that your menu style is appealing to the customers
Formats for and inclusion of menus presented to customers
There are many different styles and formats of menu that you can choose for your restaurant
◦ The most common formats for menus that are used in restaurants include:
◦ À la carte
◦ Set menu
◦ Table d’hôte
◦ Buffet
◦ Cyclical
Use correct names for style of cuisine
There are many different styles of cuisine out there
◦ If you are to use a particular style of cuisine on your menu, you will need to ensure that you use the
correct names, spelling, and pronunciation
◦ A menu that has a spelling mistake or that incorrectly describes a dish will diminish the confidence of
the reader and may disgruntle customers if they were expecting something different to what they
received
Use descriptive writing to promote sale of menu items
When writing a menu using descriptive prose you need to be aware of the following:
◦ Current fashion, type of customer or establishment can dictate the approach taken to the ways menu
descriptions are written
◦ Much care needs to be taken when writing menu descriptions
◦ Most people “scan” a menu rather than read it line by line when looking for something that will appeal
to their taste
◦ Be brief and to the point
TOPIC 5 – EVALUATE MENU
SUCCESS
Seek ongoing feedback from customers and others, and use to improve menu performance
◦ Providing a high quality and consistent products and services is the key to a restaurant's success
◦ Part of ensuring that your customers are happy is actively seeking customer feedback and building on
the relationship
◦ When you are evaluating your menu’s success and popularity, you can monitor customer satisfaction
and opinions through:
◦ Customer surveys
◦ Popularity index
◦ Sales data
Assess success of menus against customer satisfaction and
sales data
Once you have read through the feedback obtained, you should get someone else to read
through it
◦ Once the information has been sorted, you should prepare a summary of the information
◦ Once the data has been summarised and graphed, you can easily compare it with previous data
Compare your performance with previous rounds
You need to firstly make sure that anything that has been working well, and received positive
feedback in the past, is still working well
◦ Sometimes you'll make a change for one reason but inadvertently create a problem in another area
◦ This is also a good sanity check to see if the changes you made to address unacceptable performance in
a previous round have solved the problem
Provide feedback to your customers on the results
Firstly, everything must be de-identified, generalised and preferably this feedback should be
provided verbally
◦ On the upside, it will demonstrate to any disgruntled customers that they are the exception rather than
the rule
◦ On the down-side, you will be openly presenting problems with your business
◦ This actually demonstrates integrity and loyalty to your customers
Adjust menus based on feedback and profitability
The whole concept of seeking customer feedback is to improve your restaurant and menu for
the purpose of strengthening current customer loyalty, improving customer retention and
improving your ability to transform leads into sales
◦ This means that you will actually have to change some aspects of your restaurant or menu to get any
return on investment from the customer feedback process
◦ Whatever the feedback, ensure you act on it quickly, so you do not lose customers in the process of
changing
TOPIC 6 – ADDITIONAL
KNOWLEDGE
Differing characteristics of customer groups
Influence of seasonal products and commodities on menu content