Menu Design & Development
A great menu needs to sell, perform and make money
Your menu is one of the most important commercial tools in your hospitality business. It determines what your customers buy, influences their perception of your business and has a direct impact on your gross profit. But creating a successful menu is about much more than coming up with dishes that sound appealing. At Create Hospitality, we develop menus that balance customer appeal, operational practicality, consistency and profitability.
When your menu becomes a commercial problem
A menu can create significant problems for a hospitality business if it is not properly designed. Perhaps your food costs are too high. Maybe the kitchen is struggling to cope during busy services. You may be carrying too much stock, throwing away expensive ingredients or relying on dishes that require excessive preparation. You may even have a menu that customers like but that simply doesn't generate enough GP. Create can identify these problems and develop practical solutions.
Menu development with profitability in mind
Every dish needs to earn its place on a menu.
We look at factors including:
Ingredient cost
Selling price
Gross profit
Gross profit percentage
Portion control
Preparation time
Labour requirements
Equipment requirements
Ingredient utilisation
Waste
Supplier availability
Seasonality
Customer demand
This allows us to develop menus that are commercially stronger without compromising the customer experience.
Improving GP
Gross profit is fundamental to the success of any food business. Small changes to recipes, portion sizes, purchasing, pricing and ingredient utilisation can have a significant impact on profitability. Create can review your existing menu and identify opportunities to improve GP.
This might involve:
Re-costing recipes
Reviewing selling prices
Identifying low-margin dishes
Improving portion control
Reducing unnecessary ingredients
Making better use of cross-utilisation
Reviewing suppliers
Reducing waste
Replacing unnecessarily expensive ingredients
Identifying dishes that consume excessive kitchen labour
The objective isn't simply to make food cheaper. It is to ensure that your menu delivers an appropriate return while maintaining the quality and experience your customers expect.
Reducing kitchen pressure
A menu can also contribute significantly to staffing problems. An unnecessarily complicated menu creates more preparation, more stockholding, more training requirements and more opportunities for mistakes. If you are struggling to recruit or retain skilled kitchen staff, simplifying and rationalising the menu can make a considerable difference. Create can assess whether your menu is realistic for your available workforce and kitchen facilities. The aim is to create a menu your team can execute consistently, even during busy services.
Recipe development and standardisation
Consistency is essential. Customers should receive the same dish, portion and experience regardless of which member of the kitchen team prepares it. Create can develop and standardise recipes, preparation methods and portion specifications to help your team achieve this.
This can help reduce:
Over-portioning
Food waste
Inconsistent presentation
Excessive ingredient usage
Training time
Customer complaints
Unnecessary food costs
Menu engineering
Not every dish contributes equally to your business. Create can analyse menu performance and help identify which dishes should be promoted, adjusted, repriced or potentially removed. A commercially effective menu should encourage customers towards dishes that offer an appropriate balance between popularity and profitability.
Supplier and purchasing considerations
Menu development and purchasing need to work together. We can help assess supplier options, ingredient availability and product specifications to ensure that your menu can be supported by a reliable and commercially appropriate supply chain.
How Create can help
Create can provide:
Menu design
Menu development
Recipe development
Recipe standardisation
Menu costing
Menu pricing
GP analysis
Menu engineering
Supplier recommendations
Portion control
Waste reduction
Kitchen efficiency reviews
Menu rationalisation
Is your menu making enough money?
If your food business is busy but profitability isn't where it should be, your menu could be part of the problem.
Create Hospitality can review your menu and identify practical opportunities to improve GP, efficiency and consistency.