Menu Planning

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 583.

Usually the term menu refers to the written or printed list of different dishes from which a restaurant customer makes a selec­tion. It may also mean the product of the restaurant, namely, its food. Before a new restaurant opens the owner has decided on its basic character, including such features as its location, size, staff, equipment, and cuisine. Further decisions must be made on a day-to-day basis or for a longer period of time, particularly about the menu.

Planning the menu is important from two points of view; the owners' profit and the customers' pleasure.

Foods that the restaurant purchases must have a low enough cost to return a profit on the prices charged for the prepared dishes. Food costs vary for a number of reasons beyond the control of the restaurateur, such as agricultural yields or changes in supply and demand. Those who plan menus must be aware of these price vari­ations. A restaurant may serve a dish that is very popular but if the cost rises the restaurant can either omit the dish from the menu or raise the price. If the second decision meets with customer resist­ance there will be waste and loss of profits.

Many people who know the cost of food at local markets be­lieve that restaurants make a large profit; they see only the differ­ence between the prices they pay for their own food and the prices charged by restaurants. What they do not see are the direct and overhead costs of the business. Overhead is usually defined as in­direct business costs that cannot be assigned to a particular product or operation. In the foodservice industry overhead includes items such as rent, insurance, taxes other than direct sales taxes, and utilities (gas and electricity). Direct costs include not only the food itself but wages paid to employees, many of whom are seldom seen by the patrons of the restaurant. Direct and indirect costs must be considered in menu planning. Pleasing the customers is usually de­scribed as merchandising—making a product interesting so that customers will buy it. The restaurant's appearance, location and cuisine must be designed to appeal to a particular and available clientele; one is not likely to find a gourmet restaurant on a high­way used for long-distance motoring nor isa truckers' rest stop apt to be found in the theater district of a large city.

Once these basic decisions have been made it is necessary to please the customers who do come in so that they will return. The daily menu must appeal to those whom the restaurant wishes to at­tract. A lunch-time establishment in a shopping center, for ex­ample, concentrates on salads or sandwiches, while a restaurant in a tourist center may offer the local cuisine.

Perhaps more than in any other business, word-of-mouth rec­ommendation is the most important means of merchandising res­taurants; one person recommends a good restaurant to another, who then tries it. If the food meets the expectation, more recom­mendations will follow, and the restaurant may be a success; if the food isdisappointing the restaurant will soon be in trouble. This is increasingly true as more and more restaurants open. In cities like New York, Paris, London, or Tokyo, the number and variety of eat­ing places is enormous. The customer will usually make a choice based on food preference, experience, location, or recommendation of a friend or guide book.

There are other factors that affect menu planning including the availability of particular foods, the kitchen and its equipment, the capabilities of the staff, the variety of dishes served, and nutri­tion.

Availability covers both what is on hand in the restaurant and what can be obtained in the market. Waste is to be avoided but in­evitablysome food that is unserved one day can be used again, per­haps in another form: Monday's vegetables often become Tuesday's soup. Other kinds of food, such as salad greens, are perishable and must be used while they are fresh. What is available in the market is an important consideration for most dishes. Some foods are in sea­son only at certain times of the year, or their price and quality may vary. The best gourmet restaurants serve only fresh foods in season; such high standards require daily shopping. But there is a growing trend amongst restaurants of all prices, cuisines, and qualities to use frozen or prepared foods to some degree.

The limitations of the kitchen and itsstaff also enter into plan­ning so that the menu will not include dishes which the kitchen cannot properly prepare; even if a short-order cook who makes sand­wiches at a lunch counter or hamburgers at a fast food stand could make the sauces expected of a chef in a gourmet restaurant, there would not be adequate equipment for doing so.

Menus must also include a variety of foods that appeal to cus­tomers in different ways. Institutional foodservice establishments with a captive clientele—factory cafeterias, hospitals, school lunch­rooms, army camps—make a special effort to vary their menus so as to avoid complaints. In restaurants trying to attract the general public the daily menu often remains the same for a long period of time but offers a large number of different dishes. This is a charac­teristic of Chinese restaurants where the list of dishes may cover several pages. (This is possible because Chinese dishes mix a limited number of basic foods in many different combinations.) Other restaurants may offer different dishes every day.

Food appeal is another factor in menu planning.This includes not only the way the food tastes but the way it looks on the plate, the way it smells and even its texture. Appeal to the eye is especial­ly important: the shapes and forms, the color combinations, even the dishes in which the food is served. The Japanese have raised the eye appeal of food to an art.

Anyone who plans menus should have some basic knowledge of nutrition and the properties in food that contribute to the health of those who eat it. For institutional food services this is so impor­tant that their staffs often include a dietitian to plan correct nutritional values. This is essential in hospitals where many patients are on special diets.

Foods are usually classified into five basic groups according to their nutritional values; the menu planner should have some knowl­edge of these groups. Proteins are the cell building elements in foods. Meat and fish are rich in proteins; there are smaller quan­tities in grains such as wheat and rice, in nuts, and in some kinds of beans. Carbohydrates are compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and ox­ygen that provide the body with heat and energy; grains have a high carbohydrate content, and so do potatoes and sugar. Fats are oily substances that are another source of heat and energy; they also form deposits of fatty tissue in the body. Vegetable oils are a liquid source of fat; other foods rich in fats are dairy products such as milk, butter, and cheese. Minerals and vitamins are substances nec­essary in very small amounts to regulate the functions of parts of the body such as nerves and glands; they are widely distributed through many different foods. Milk, for example, is rich in the mineral calcium, used in building bones; seafood is rich in iodine which is present in the thyroid gland. Vitamins abound in fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, fish, and meat. Water, taken either as a fluid or as part of solid food, is also a nutritional necessity. It should be noted that many foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables contain a high percentage of water.

In addition to knowledge of these nutrients, the modern menu planner should be aware of calories. A calorie is a unit of heat that is used to indicate the energy value of food. Only a certain number of calories can be used by a human being; calories in excess of those are stored as fat. Today when most people are conscious of the rela­tion between beauty, health, and weight, many count their calories carefully. The menu planner in a restaurant attracting customers who watch their weight should be careful to provide a number of low-calorie dishes. Even gourmet cooking now has chefs who adapt or develop dishes with a lower calorie count.

The person responsible for menu planning in some restaurants is the chef, or chief cook; the term cook usually indicates an assist­ant to the chef. In small, independently owned restaurants, the owner-manager and the chef may work on the menu together. Very large restaurants and institutional foodservices may have a menu department under a dietitian.

The normal procedure is to plan the menu for several days in advance; some large institutions work out menus for a whole year in advance. It is customary to decide first on the main courses or dishes, known as the entrees, and then plan the rest of the meal around them. Some features—appetizers, desserts, and bever­ages— may change very little or not at all over a long period of time.

The printed menu is a key factor in restaurant merchandising. When the menu changes daily it is common to use a cover with the name and logo of the restaurant on it. A few restaurants have a handwritten list inside an elaborate cover; others have their menus printed or typed every day; others have a permanent menu, often with illustrations of the dishes. Typed, printed, or handwritten notes on specialties of the day can be attached to these permanent menus. The style of the menu, like the appearance of the public areas of the restaurant, is an indication of the kind of establishment it is.

Two systems of pricing dishes on the menu are customary; both are known by French terms—table d'hote and a la carte. On a table d'hote menu, the price of the entree is the price of the com­plete meal. On an a la carte menu, each dish (appetizer, entree, side dishes such as vegetables and salads, and desserts) is priced sep­arately. Restaurants with a la carte menus are ordinarily more ex­pensive than those with table d'hote menus.

Menus are among the souvenirs that customers frequently take from restaurants, along with matches and ashtrays. Many people ask for a copy of the menu when they have had a particularly mem­orable meal and the manager usually complies since he is merchan­dising at low cost.