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Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
1228: 7 Phases of Menu Engineering with Sean Willard
01:55:17
Sean Willard has two decades of hospitality experience. He started in the business in his teens in a steakhouse and quickly moved through nearly all positions (FOH and BOH) until he landed at menu engineering. He then attended Cornell University's...
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- [00:01]
A
Restaurant owners, this is Eric Cachetori, host of Restaurant Unstoppable with your reminder that you're missing out on the support you need to be unstoppable. If the mission statement is to inspire, empower and transform the industry, we inspire with the podcast and we empower with the podcast. But the transformation that only comes through community. And that's what's happening over at Restaurant Unstoppable Live. Restaurant owners from across the nation are coming together to support each other and to learn the biggest lessons we've garnered in the past 13 years. We're making it easy for you, we're creating community around these lessons and I'm literally escorting you to the experts in the industry that are the foremost experts on these subjects, these lessons we're learning. So this week we have coffee with Eric, I should say next week you're listening to this on Thursday. Next week, the 20th, we have coffee with Eric at 11am where I just listen to your interests, your, your challenges, your curiosities and reverse engineer those curiosities and interests into content. And then on Tuesday we have our second EOS Power Hour with Blake Winters, EOS implementer. If you head over to restaurantstoppable.comeos I will get you the EOS playlist and we'll get you a link to be sure to join our second EOS session. And if you just already sold on Restaurant Stoppable Live and you want to sign up today, head over to restaurantstoppable.com live, sign up and support this mission to inspire, empower and transform the industry. Now enjoy today's episode. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1000 episodes I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by US Foods and one of the pillars of the US Foods we help you make it promise is more tools which provides resources designed to make running your food service operation easier and more efficient. From the all in one food service app Moxy which goes beyond order placement to help manage every part of your operation 24, 7 to the digital solutions like check business tools and vitals, US Foods delivers smart time saving tools built to simplify operations and support. Use your success to learn more visit www.usfoods.com. expect more.
- [02:42]
B
Do you wish you could have all.
- [02:44]
A
Of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you can. It's called Restaurant Systems Pro. And with Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to restaurant unstoppable.com RSP where you can schedule your own demo, watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show. That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP this episode is made possible by me is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus and nail food execution at scale. We know to scale you need consistency because consistency builds trust with your guests and your staff. We all want to know what the job done right looks like. And when you have systems, your systems are a picture of perfection, of what that job done right is. Is. And that puts us to peace. We are so happy when we know we're doing a good job. Me's will be the one source of truth for your entire team. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable that's www.g e t m e z.com unstoppable with excitement. Allow me to introduce you today's guest menu engineer, Sean Willard. My man. Sean, are you feeling unstoppable today?
- [04:36]
B
I'm feeling unstoppable, man.
- [04:38]
A
I'm psyched for this conversation. You are exactly the kind of person I love to get on the show. Somebody who is just an expert at what they do. I found you by way of Stephanie Robson. The last time she referred an expert to me, it was phenomenal. It was her. Her guest. Her. Her pest control expert. I don't know if that. If you know who that person is, her name's escaping me. I wish I looked it up before we got started, but it was an amazing workshop on how we control pests in our restaura. And she gave amazing advice and she was such an expert and she spoke about you, Sean, the same way she spoke about that. That other women. And you know, Stephanie just knows talent when she sees it. So I Hope I didn't put too much pressure on you setting this up, but I'm confident that today is going to be a great conversation. Today we're going to be talking about seven phases of menu engineering. And that's a little teaser. Before we get into that, let's get the motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you have for us on?
- [05:35]
B
Oh, success quota mantra. I can pop it up on the screen. And this is coming right from the School of Hotel Administration. It's kind of theirs and it's live. It's why I wanted to go to the school to begin with. Life is service. The one who progresses is the one who gives his fellow men a little more, a little better service. And when I work with teams, I just try to say that, you know, when we're working on your menu, we're just trying to make it that little bit better so that your team can give that little bit better service. So it really carries through for us in all that we do.
- [06:06]
A
I mean, I think it is that simple and that hard. I think life really does boil down to serving others. I think it's a human need, a human requirement to be able to add value to your fellow person. I think it's a part of survival. If you're not valuable, if you're just dead weight on the tribe, the tribe is going to get rid of you. You know, like, it's like you need to add value to the tribe. You need to be a person of value. I think that's how we're seen and I think that's where hospitality stems from, is just being the desire to be seen, in, to see. And that all stems on your ability to provide value to others. What are your thoughts on that?
- [06:40]
B
I think that that's going to be the difference maker going forward between winners and losers. It's the ones who are able to capture the hospitality mentality beyond just service, which is, you know, obviously more transactional based, but the people that have the ability to create warmth and engaging relationships that will be needed in the years to come because it is tough competition out there.
- [07:02]
A
Yeah. And selfishly love that you focused on service. It is one of the core values that I recently committed to and reorganizing my core values here at restaurant. Unstoppable service, others first. So feeling good about that decision when you reinforce it with that quote, awesome way to get this thing started. So before we dive into these seven phases of menu development that you're going to be sharing with us, uh, help us understand who you are, man, why should we be listening to you? What's your story?
- [07:29]
B
Yeah, first I just want to acknowledge Stephanie Robson. She was a professor of mine at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. She was an amazing professor. I took a core level course with her in my first semester there. I only had five because I had transferred in from community college. And after my first course I told her, I'm going to take a class with you every single semester because I just love having you as an instructor. She's played a pivotal role in my growth and development from the hotel, school and beyond to here. About Me I started at independent restaurants. You know, kind of restaurant stories start like this. You know, 18 years old, wasn't the best student, was kicking around community college. It actually ended up taking me five and a half years to complete a two year degree because I was always working in restaurants. But I started at a steakhouse. They had me start in the front as a host. And so originally my first job in restaurants was cleaning menus and caring for menus. And as I was up there, I started to notice things like, oh, we listed this beer twice or this one's spelled wrong. And I'd point it out to the owner, pointed out to the owner. And one day he looked at me and just said, Sean, we're not English majors, we're restaurateurs, basically, kind of just saying, leave me alone. And eventually when he had a position open up in Accounts Payable, he asked if I wanted to take that role. And I jumped at it. And it was eye opening for me. This is back in 2005, right into 2006. They were still on a paper and pencil system at that time, which resulted in me making some errors that I was not happy about. And we got them to transition into their first computer system. But that first project, they asked me to change the prices on their menus. And I went to them and I said, okay, what are the costs so we can figure out our prices? And they said, we haven't costed our menu in over five years. So then the project became a costing exercise. I learned then just how long that takes to go through and accurately cost every single item. Because you only get this small window with the chef that you actually have his attention in like the afternoon, sometimes between lunch and dinner. That took us close to a month to really accurately capture the cost. But once we were able to do so, that was my first endeavor into menus. And when that chef wanted to leave and start his own restaurant, his name is Fernando and He asked me if I wanted to run the front of the house and he was going to run the back of the house. I was 22, 23 at the time and I left at that. So I was the general manager, he was the executive chef, and we worked in tandem for about two and a half years at Fernando's Grill. It's still around in Heightstown, New Jersey. Fantastic place. But one day, getting ready for a Saturday, I was out in front talking to the landlord as he was watering the plants. And he told me about the hotel school at Cornell. I went in, read the page, it said, if you're this person, this person, this person, then you should apply. I felt like it was speaking directly to me. Went and toured the school and then the quote that I shared, the life is service quote was on the wall and it was like, oh, I want to go here, I need to go here. And that time at the hotel school, that is where I met. I felt like I was behind when I got there because I was coming in as a 24 year old sophomore undergrad and I only had two and a half years there. So the first week at orientation, I actually went around to every professor's door and just knocked to go in and introduce myself. That changed the course of my time at the school because I started these relationships with the professors and friendships that have lasted to today. So when I graduated, I went to my professor, Sherry Kimes, who's a professor of revenue management, and she introduced me to Greg Rapp. Greg was sort of the original menu engineer in the field. When I Met Greg in 2015, we were introduced, he'd been engineering menus for 33 years.
- [11:29]
A
Wow.
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B
I was about, I think about 10 or 12 years in hospitality somewhere in there. And I thought I knew everything about menus. I've been, went to school for it. I've been doing them for 10 years. I knew everything there was to know until I met Greg. And he flipped the world upside down for me. And the things that I thought that I was doing for good reason turned out to be illogical. And he changed the world for me. We got to work for five and a half years together on some really amazing projects together. I was sort of, you know, the back end for him.
- [12:05]
A
Let me pause you right there because I have some questions. I'm just curious, what was it, this conversation, the woman who introduced you to this mentor, Greg, what was it in your dialog, in your language with her that said for her to say, this is the guy you got to meet.
- [12:22]
B
That'S A good question. You know, Sherry and I just became friends, and I forget exactly how. I think it was actually from that day that I introduced myself and we just continued conversations. I ended up, at some point when I was a student, she had asked me to come. She was having a party with the other faculty members, and the dean and stuff were there. It was a really fun black wine glass party. So I was behind a curtain pouring wine glasses that were all chilled to the same temperature. People were trying to guess red and white. And ever since then, we just kind of had this unique bond. And when I got to San Diego, I wrote to her and said, hey, I'm in San Diego. I'm looking for my next adventure. And that's when she introduced me to Greg.
- [13:06]
A
Did you at this point, kind of show an interest, a passion in the. I guess the numbers, the engineering, the psychology of menus? Was that like a passion of yours at this point, or was it like, how does she know that this was the guy you had to talk to?
- [13:20]
B
That's a really good question. I guess I hadn't been menu specific. I really wasn't. Going into restaurant operations was my intended goal. As I was coming out as a student, I actually went and worked with a hotel company in Maine. For gosh, it was only about just under a year. We got five feet of snow in one month. And I just decided, this isn't for me. And that's when I moved to San Diego, where, you know, you can't shovel sunshine there. No snow. But. But she knew that I was interested in food and beverage. And so I guess it was kind of a welcome connection. You know, we have from the hotel school, you get a good base layer of data analytics and things like that. So it was a good combination. Greg was one of the just those remarkable personalities who. He just lit up a room.
- [14:08]
A
And is it your experience with Greg Rapp that kind of got you hooked on the idea of menu engineering? And, like, what was it specifically that pulled you into this world?
- [14:18]
B
Yeah, it was our first trip internationally. We went to Moscow, Russia, for a company named Coffee Mania. At the time, they had 30 locations in and around Moscow. And we were there walking through Red Square to one of their locations, taking in just everything around us. And it was a moment that was like, oh, this is amazing. We can work with people all around the world. We can go visit amazing places, but really have a significant impact on their operation as well. And that opened up also that we're doing menus at such scale when we're working with A place in a city such as Moscow, because at that time they had 8 million Chinese tourists that were coming every year. So we needed to create a menu where language was a barrier and, you know, another menu that was in English and another menu that was in Russian. And it was so fun that I just wanted to keep going with it. Yeah.
- [15:17]
A
And this guy, you know, Greg Rap, Rest in Peace, passed away 2020. Has worked, has been featured in on ABC, CBS, NBC, Times, Inc. Magazine, New York Times, the Wall Street. And like, he's no joke. Like, this. This guy was kind of like the godfather of menu engineering. And this is the person that you are basically being groomed by, mentored by. This was. This is who you came up under. I just want to put emphasis on that.
- [15:52]
B
It. He had a profound impact on my life. I've actually thought about this because we got to work together for five and a half years, and it's been just about five and a half years that he passed. And he changed the course of my life forever with this gift. I truly view it as a gift. He had the knowledge that he shared with me and now I have the ability to share it with others. I leave his process pretty much untouched. I say it's an elementary process at face value because when you come into our menu workshops there, we have cut up paper and colors and pens and stickers and post it notes. It looks like an arts and crafts project, but that's really the best way that we found time and again to make menus. Obviously, in the pandemic, we tried to switch into digital to make changes, and that fell flat on its face. And we ended up. I ended up having to get a document camera so we could go back and revert to the original methods that Greg shared with me and shared with others.
- [16:55]
A
So these methods are. Are we going to be unpackaging these methods today during these seven phases of menu development?
- [17:01]
B
Yes.
- [17:02]
A
All right, cool. What were the biggest things that he brought to your attention? I know we're going to be unpackaging a lot today, but if you could just give us one or two things that made the biggest impact on you from Greg. What were those things?
- [17:22]
B
I think for us, we now lived a life where menus are all we think about 100% of the time, pretty much 95% of the time. Let's just say in our work life and for others in the industry, it is often an afterthought. Despite it being the single most important document, aside from like your lease and insurance, it's the single most important Document that you have to keep your business alive to communicate to your customers, to have the transactional and exchange of value. It happens with that kind of social contract of a menu. And we've found, or I've found time and again in the field that it is often something that takes a backseat. Sometimes people will start a restaurant thinking, oh, I know what I want to cook. Then they go through all the process of setting it up and they get about a few weeks away from opening. They're like, oh gosh, we got to go back and do a menu. And so it's one of those things that catches up later. And oftentimes that menu, that original one, may live for two or three years before they revisit it.
- [18:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of the granular detail of what he taught you about menu engineering is going to come out when we go through these seven phases of menu development. Any final thoughts about, you know, what makes you an expert, why we should be listening to you before we dive into the first phase? Ideation.
- [18:43]
B
Yeah. I believe that the work that I do is getting better with every project that I do. But I also go into it as if I know nothing and I, I share this with people. When we start our workshops, when we start a menu workshop, I have no idea where we're going to end up at the end of the day. And that's intentional by design because if I go into the restaurant or the workshop thinking that I know where we should go, I'm now guiding people to my menu and we I'm not there to make my menu. I'm there to help that team make their menu the best possible version it can be together with their team. It's gotta be a collaborative effort. Our process does not work. If someone just emails us the data and their menu and says fix it, that menu is gonna fail and fall flat on its face and they're gonna point fingers at us and say, that's.
- [19:40]
A
Why this episode is made possible by US Foods. And one of the pillars of the US Foods we help you make it promise is more tools which adds resources designed to make running your food service operation easier and more efficient. From the all in one food service app Moxy, which goes beyond order placement to help you manage every part of your operation 24, 7 to the digital solutions like check business tools and vitals, US Foods delivers smart time saving tools built to simplify your operation and support your success. With Moxie alone, you can browse products with AI powered search, manage lists, track deliveries with the AI powered wares My Truck by US Foods reorder with just a few clicks. And you can do that from your phone, tablet or desktop. Here's a bonus. You can even browse Moxie without signing in. And we can't forget Check Business Tools, which is essentially a suite of vetted third party solutions that help operators solve critical business challenges such as drive traffic to their location, simplify staffing processes and modernize operations for greater efficiency. To learn more, visit www.usfoods.com expect more going to say that strikes a chord with me. That is the same process I use when I travel the country looking for restaurant tours. I literally let word of mouth steer the ship. I just, I, I, if I plan an interview, it almost always goes wrong. But if I just show up with an open mind and I say, who are you? And let me hear your story, let me listen. First seek to understand, then seek to be understood, it just goes so much better. And there, I think, I don't know, I think there's a real value in just being present and letting what is inside of people come out organically instead of trying to steer it or pull it out of them.
- [21:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you know, coming in as an outside consultant, sometimes we get, depending on who brought us in, some people will clam up and be like, I've been doing this for so long. What do they know that I don't know already? And I really work actively in our process. And Greg called it the state of the menu meeting where we go to individuals or small groups and we do it by tier. So we might start with the executive level, the management level, and then the frontline staff. And we're there just to listen. And once we're able to kind of, they get, they understand why we're there and how we can help, then things open up and it comes out in our workshops as well. Sometimes our workshops turn, turn into menu therapy where there is disputes or maybe one department disagrees with how another department's approaching something. We need to get that out so that we're all on the same page with the next menu iteration. So there's a social dynamic to our work as well.
- [22:36]
A
I love it, man. Let's get into it. So we're going to cover seven phases of menu engineering today or menu engineering development. The first phase is ideation. What is ideation?
- [22:49]
B
Ideation. For us, it's kind of the best part of the whole process. And you may always be here. I call it a cycle. And you may be in all seven phases of the cycle at one time. Simultaneously. But ideation is when we're going out and first we reflect and say we need to change something. We haven't changed our menu in a while, or now it's coming up on the time we said we were going to change the menu. So there's a moment of reflection. And we encourage teams to kind of just say, hey, what's worked well, what hasn't? And that also goes into what concepts do we admire and that inspire our brand. And they don't have to be restaurant concepts. I ask clients to provide this to us. They help kind of be a guiding light for us. The example I share is sometimes people will say, I love apple advertisements because there's lots of white space. You know, they're clean posters that are very minimalistic. That gives us a direction for that restaurant's intended marketing goals and the next part. And we also have what we call Greg called it going on menu safaris. So if we're looking to improve our cocktails, then we might go on a cocktail safari around town to the best cocktail bars. If we're looking to learn about the best burgers, people will write to me and ask, hey, our team's going out, we're going to go work on burgers. What city should we visit? My choice there is Dallas. Because there are so many teams headquartered there that you can get a pretty wide range of really great burgers there. But it's essential to go out and have. It's like a bonding activity where the team is sharing and talking about the competition. And in the time that they're breaking apart that team's menu or analyzing it, they're also building up what they want to be able to do or do differently at their own establishment.
- [24:54]
A
Yeah, so the majority of my interviews early on, when I started this podcast, I was chasing award winners. You know, I'm talking James Beard award winners, Michelin star chefs, you know, people that were heavy on the menu, really experiential based eating through the food. In your experience, the people you work with, are they food first or are they more operations, experience, decor? I don't know, maybe it's a food or entertainment. Like what, what do you find when people come to you? Are they like really rigid on what they want to create in terms of menu, or are they more people who are operations minded, marketing minded, who are looking to fill a hole with food?
- [25:38]
B
We. I'm using the consultant answer to everything. It depends. And it really, for us, it just depends on the client. We work with everyone from mom and pop shops to global Chains. When we have people, sometimes that will be very prescriptive in what they want out of their menu. This is the design, this is. We're not straying from this, and that's fantastic. I love when people have a vision. It does leave a little bit of friction when we're trying to make some changes. Potentially. We work with James Beard award winning chefs, as you mentioned. One that I've done some great work with is Michael Schwartz in Miami. He's a fantastic chef. He's got three restaurants in Miami. And at the time when we worked together, his team was still changing menus daily. And so their whole team's culture revolved around the menu. Every day they changed the menu. So shift meetings were so important because people needed to know what's changed on today's menu. They tasted the food really well. They took the time to celebrate the menu. And that, as a menu engineer, just warmed my heart. That's not always the case. Again, sometimes for others, it's an afterthought and a task that needs to get done because someone told them they have to do so.
- [26:52]
A
Yeah. So the reason why I framed the question the way I did is, you know, what, what comes first, the. The menu or the restaurant? Or, you know, like so many people who get into this industry are so passionate about food. They've been dreaming about their food for as long as they've discovered the Food Network on tv and their dreams of the restaurant they're gonna create. And they get this. This vision, this idea of the food they're gonna do and how they're gonna do it. But the problem is maybe they're in love with it, but is the market in love with it?
- [27:22]
B
That's a great question. And we always encourage people to start small and test, but the menu should be at the front of the development process for any concept. I say this because the menu is going to dictate what equipment you purchase, what type of cutlery and plates you need, what kind of takeout containers you need. They're all going to be dictated by what you chose to put on the menu. And when we're talking about kitchen equipment, there's construction plans that have to go through approval processes, things like that, Ansel systems that have to be installed. So it really needs to be up at the forefront. Sometimes that's not the luxury that restaurants have. You know, they might be going into an existing space. And now we're adapting the other way where we have this equipment, and that's a given, and we have to work within that limitation. And make sure we're not overloading any one station by our menu choices.
- [28:15]
A
Got it. Is there anything else worth bringing to the conversation regarding ideation? I know there's probably more of these questions that are in my head. They're going to come out naturally as we progress forward.
- [28:28]
B
Yeah. I think what people should know is that we base competition on three factors. It's either similar in cuisine type, price point, or based on proximity. So anyone that's within about two miles of your restaurant, you should have a pretty good idea of what they're doing and where their price. Especially if you feel that they're directly in your competitive set. Cuisine type, you know, probably within 10 to 15 miles, you should be familiar with who's around and on price point, probably in like that 5 mile range is good to know, maybe even up a little bit further out, just depending on how densely populated your area is. But identifying your competitors is. It's essential and we use it as a time after we go through and share our process, right before we jump into that team's workshop, we look at their competitors menus because their minds are ready to pick apart a menu. And so the competitors menu give us that opportunity. They're usually eager to say, oh, they're doing this wrong, they're doing this wrong. And then we have to shine the light on, well, what are they doing really well. And then we start talking about that and all that flows into our workshop. So that's how we use the competitor menu sort of as a springboard for the creative process.
- [29:50]
A
So during this ideation phase, are you thinking about blue ocean opportunity? Like the blue ocean effect of like, who is not doing this in the market? Like, where is the opportunity? Or do you focus more on passion?
- [30:02]
B
Ooh, both those things. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but blue ocean for sure. What is something that works somewhere else that isn't here? Right. If you went to Tokyo and you got to experience the Japanese street food and you said, gosh, my town would love a Japanese street food concept. That is the type of thing that we're looking for in the ideation process. It can be. An ideation could be like a poster that has nothing to do with a restaurant, but you really like the typography or the colors or, or anything. Wherever we gain inspiration from this. That's why I love this part of the process so much because it's like the fun part.
- [30:46]
A
What I mean, I feel like trends, the word trends has to come up in this conversation today. And I think it makes sense to come up here and dreaming up in the ideation process. The ideation. The ideation phase, like, how much emphasis do you put on trends? Do you encourage your clients to pay attention to trends? Or what do you think matters more? Trends or.
- [31:07]
B
I guess. Absolutely. Trends are definitely. We need to be aware of where the majority of consumers are leaning right now. For example, there's a preference where people are. It's probably about. I think between 65 and 70% of people are willing to replace one meal a day with snacks. Well, okay, that. That triggers something for us when we're going out and building menus with teams. What do we have for snacks that may be in that midday segment when we're a little bit quiet, does that create an opportunity for us to create an afternoon snack menu? And we've done that with a team where they shared with us. Our bar is not our focus. Yeah, we have wine, but we're a pizza place. And so rather than trying to promote a happy hour when that's not part of their mix, we went with a snacky hour to fill that trend demand of meal replacement with snacks.
- [32:05]
A
Got it. Anything else you want to drop on us relative to ideation?
- [32:12]
B
Yes. One of the best parts about the process that we have is that we talk to the different tiers, and when we get to the frontline tier, the people that are working with the customers every single day, I often ask if there's. The company has a really great trainer. I want to talk to them because they're passing down the cultural knowledge, and I need to know what that cultural knowledge is. But some of the best ideas that we get for the menu come from the frontline staff. And that is because they've eaten their way through the menu so many times that they're now at the point where they're adding and removing and customizing things into what they like. And sometimes what they like is something that no one has ever thought of before. I give the example of the Frappuccino at Starbucks. The Frappuccino was created by a barista in store, and it went on to become one of the most successful coffee drinks ever.
- [33:09]
A
Yeah, I think also too, they're. They're having the conversation with the guests. They're the closest to the guests. They're paying attention to requests, modifications, the feedback. Like, they know what's going, what's not going.
- [33:22]
B
And we encourage competition can be another great way. So that was something that we actually took. I took away from our first trip with Greg when we went to Coffee Mania in Moscow, they were hosting what they called the Coffee mania cup. And there were two tracks. There was a food track and then a coffee beverage track. And across their 30 locations, they had a tournament where, you know, there was around a series of voting and dish creation. Some of the limitations where you have to use ingredients that are already within this kitchen. Okay, now they have parameters that they need to work with, but a lot of new menu ideas are going to come out of that healthy competition amongst teams. So for multi unit operators, it's a great way for the team to participate in the development of the menu.
- [34:09]
A
Yeah, it keeps things from getting stagnant. You know, it lets your team, who might be cooking the same menu over and over and over again, who are cooks because they like the creative process, lets them flex that creative muscle.
- [34:21]
B
Yeah, and there's nice ways to do that around. I worked with a team that had their daily specials where Thursday was burger special, Friday was shrimp. Now the customer knows that they're going to come in and they're going to have a shrimp special on Friday. The chef still had the creative ability at his location, his or her location, to make whatever shrimp dish they wanted. So they had the creative outlet. But the customer has a framework to know, ah, Friday's when I go, because I always get the special shrimp that day.
- [34:56]
A
Got it. So ideation, at the end of this process, we have an idea, we have inspiration, we, we're, we're feeling pretty confident about the direction we want to go. The next phase on our list is planning and analysis. Get into that.
- [35:10]
B
This is coincides with our version of that state of the menu meeting. And we encourage teams to do this on their own, even if no one is coming in from the outside. And just to frame a conversation around these two questions, what's worked well and how can we improve? How can we improve? A sort of encompassing of what are we not doing well, but what's worked well. If it's possible to extend those items like what's working well into new items, and we'll talk about extending stars in a bit, that's going to come out. At this point. The goal setting is something that I'm actually more actively working on with teams who have lower staff engagement in hospitality service. Teams that have. The pendulum has swung to our services. Transactional and far from warm hospitality service. I think we've seen this systemically in our industry since the pandemic, that there's just sort of a new feeling when we're out in restaurants. It's not the same warmth that maybe we had. When you go to. And this isn't to say this is for everybody, but just sort of in general. Hospitality services changed so much in the past five years. The. The what do we hope to achieve is very important for the owners or operators to be able to articulate what's the mission of the business. And that should be able to be communicated down through all levels for the team so they understand, hey, this is what we're working for, is it? We have seven locations and we're working to open seven more in five years.
- [36:57]
A
Great.
- [36:58]
B
Now they have an idea of what we're working towards or we're really happy with the three locations we have. We're going to keep this business in the family. Our goal is to give it to our kids one day. Fantastic. Now I know what's.
- [37:11]
A
Yeah, you reminded me of Rudy. Mick was literally just on the show and we were talking about the three. I guess I don't remember exactly how he framed the. The. The workshop title, but the whole idea is using things like vision, mission, values as tools to steer all of your decisions going forward. So basically what I'm hearing you say during this planning and analysis phase, you have to look at is what we said we want to do with our menu. Does that align? Does it fit through the filter? That is our, our values and our mission. Is it. Is it all going in the right direction?
- [37:50]
B
Yeah. And that, that is this time too. And also when people are picking what metrics they want to measure by, we have to. It's different for every team. It's actually f. Fascinating to me. 100%. So knowing what their performance indicators are for us, I like to look at ratios. How many desserts are we selling for every 10 guests? Surprisingly low. In full service, we're usually around like 1 out of 10 guests may get dessert for better or worse. Sometimes we want the table back. And you know, what are our non alcoholic beverage sales compared to our food sales? Right. And this is in the quantity, not necessarily in the dollar value. I'm looking to see what that ratio is for non alcoholic bever. If we see that number is really low, we may need to jump into the point of sale system and see if people are being prompted to make sure they ring in their beverages. Non alcoholic beverages are a really easy way for a restaurant to leak a significant amount of money.
- [38:45]
A
Yeah, that just came up in a conversation yesterday. So when we're thinking of planning and analysis, you said something. You know, no two restaurants are exactly the same. And that's one thing I've Realized. I think that when we try to offer advice, when I hear advice from consultants or experts, it seems to generalize a certain outcome. But the thing is like there are no two humans, there are no two businesses that are exactly the same. The objectives might be different, the marketplace might be different, the strengths and weaknesses of the organization might be different. There's just so many variables to consider in trying to figure out who are we and how do we do it. You said something that kind of stood out to me is that the industry has changed a lot in the past five years where we're moving in a more transactional throughput, trying to get as much reach as possible. And it seems like we're less concerned with impact and relationships and service. That's not the first time I've heard people who've been in this industry their entire life noticing this trend. When planning our menu and figuring out like where are we going and you know, what's actually going to work, what's going to catch traction? Do you think that that trend is going to continue to be more transactional, more about throughput and reach, or do you think there's going to be a resurgence of more impactful, transformative, relationship based businesses?
- [40:06]
B
Great question, and I'll kind of answer that in two parts. First is on our attention spans. When I started with Greg in 2015, we knew we had about 60 to 90 seconds of a guest attention when they sat down, opened the menu, that they were going to read through it and maybe have some conversation at the table. By 2020, we'd cut that in half to. You have about 30 to 45 seconds in 2025. I'm very comfortable with cutting that estimate in half. Again. We have 10 to 20 seconds of a guest's actual attention before something pops up on their phone. Their mind goes to something else. So we need to make sure that they find something that they love very quickly. So for us, that's about making menus as easy to navigate as possible. Oh gosh, now I'm forgetting the second part.
- [41:03]
A
So basically the question was, are we moving in a more transactional throughput reach direction or impact relationship? High touch direction.
- [41:14]
B
Yeah, it, it's. We've the pendulum and this will vary at segments of the industry. Right. We're kind of talking in general from quick service to find out dining there has been this trend of swinging towards speed and efficiency. You know, having to reduce labor is a very consistent.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah, it's a real issue for a lot of operators also meeting the expectation of the consumer to get it now for cheaper, as fast as possible. Like faster cheaper.
- [41:46]
B
Yeah. And one thing that is nice though, and you mentioned earlier about, you know, is there any kind of relief from this? And I actually do believe that restaurants, hospitality, it will be one of these kind of last castles where we can have a technology free experience. You know, you could put your phone away and getting handed a tactile menu that you hold in a warmly lit restaurant with nice music in the background, completely free of electronic distractions, you will have that, you know, even 20 years from now, you will still value that little bit of respite. Depending on again your intentions on going out that day. If it is to sit down and enjoy a meal. If it's more for utility, then of course we love the technology and the speed that allows us to make things transactional.
- [42:35]
A
So when you're talking with your clients and you're in this planning and analysis phase, do you encourage them to be mindful of these trends of consumer behavior? You know, are you steering away from having your guests be focused on more impactful experiences and say you might want to consider a more convenient experience, a throughput experience?
- [43:00]
B
We'll look at. Does their menu align with the service level that they're delivering? Sometimes they may have a fancier menu than the service they're delivering and they're misaligned in that they may be misaligned in their price orientation. We have a lot of people who are afraid to increase prices because they're worried about losing customers. Some of what we do is giving people permission. You know, as your costs go up, you do have to adjust those prices. There's a number, number of things and I, I, if Can you remind me of the question again actually, just so.
- [43:36]
A
I make sure I hit it. I mean it's really just not so much a question, you know, more just curiosity. From what you're seeing the trends in the industry because you're not the first person who's mentioned that we're moving away from. It's, it's becoming more and more difficult. There's a mid market that it seems like it's evaporating where the organizations that are more experiential, hospitality driven, service driven are. That market's not going to go anywhere. It's going to shift more towards fine dining, higher ticket items or higher, you know, bills. Like I don't know if there's enough market space for everybody to be focusing on that. It's one of my concerns is, is, is there enough market space for everyone to go out and be charged $200 a meal? Or is there more practicality in going through convenience and throughput and reach? And just like having a very small menu that hits a void in a market that people can get as quickly and cheaply as possible, like, where are we heading?
- [44:36]
B
So, and it's a mix, you know, by the business type, right, who they're serving, but within a menu, we can have both, you know, items that are designed. And you should build menus in this way. You have items. And it's actually a great phrase that I just got from a team that I was working with in London. They said, you know, you have to build your menus for the Duke and the driver. And I'd never heard that before, but basically, you know, you have that luxury item so that the people that want to spend can spend and then the people that are looking to save. And I guess the story goes that the driver had a egg and mayo sandwich for 150 pound. Right. And so what do we have for guests that are looking to save? We encourage people to do this. So I worked with a team that they're a large kind of entertainment, sports bar kind of place. Large group, group gatherings. We, they had a sampler platter on their menu that was $14. And they were in Dallas, Texas. Boomer Jacks. I can say the name Boomer Jacks. And they had the jack sampler appetizer. Well, they're in Texas, they serve groups when in Texas, everything's bigger. And so we created the fat Jack sampler, which was just blown up on a half sheet pan. Now that was their first item. That was $38 when it was introduced. At the same time we introduced that item, they also were rolling out a $6 brown bag burger. And that brown bag burger was, instead of it being two smash patties on top of one another, it was just a single smashed patty slice of cheese and bread. And they were selling it for six bucks in a brown bag. And they were doing it that early happy hour and late night happy hour. Why we encourage teams to do this is because when price resistance is met, first off, it's the frontline people that are having to deal with it. And those are often not the people making the menu decisions. So our frontline team is out there having to deal with pushback potentially on prices going up. And it's nice to have a lever that says, ah, you know, let me tell you about the $6 brown bag burger that we have. It is fantastic. Six bucks. Best burger you'll get for six bucks. You just got to Come happy hour or late night happy hour, you'll love it. And you've now kind of taken the temperature down on. You still have something that provides value. And just to add on that, just before we jump, one of the things that I do and why teams bring me in is because I'm here to look out for their profitability and their guest experience. My first prior goal is their profitability because that's our key performance indicator is profit per guest, guest per visit. So I was working with a team in Memphis, and yeah, there's no reason why I couldn't name them. The. The name is Tops Barbecue. It's Tops Burgers and Barbecue. And they're a quick service burger and barbecue restaurant. On their breakfast menu, they had a breakfast sandwich for 2.99. And this was last year in 2024. And I see a $2.99 breakfast sandwich. And I said, guys, we can easily get three and a quarter for this or even 350. And we shouldn't get. You know, that should be fine. It's already still a great value. I. You can't even get a three dollar breakfast sandwich at the gas station. And the CEO came back and pushed back at me and said, no, we want to be the place that the plumber, fireman, electrician can stop at five days a week on their way to work.
- [48:25]
A
And those trade organizations are making some money right now, let's be honest.
- [48:28]
B
Yeah, they can afford 350.
- [48:31]
A
Sorry, keep going.
- [48:32]
B
They wanted to serve that utility segment. Right. Of. We want to serve at a lower price point because we're filling that utility need of people's need to have breakfast. And they wanted to be that regular place. And so that's sort of the dynamic that happens with teams. Teams. I'll come in and say, profit, profit, profit, and they'll say brand or guest. And then we create beautiful menus from there. Yeah.
- [48:56]
A
And there's. There's a balance, for sure. And I think that you have to remind operators that you need profit to deliver on the brand. Profit the brand promise, because it takes resources. It takes people. It takes. You can't not make money and be the. The answer for people.
- [49:10]
B
Yeah, yeah. And sometimes, you know, we can. We can raise prices without lowering revenue, and we actually end up having to work a little bit less because we've made some adjustments are oftentimes. And I was guilty of this with the Chef Fernando that I worked with in New Jersey. He's an amazing chef. But in our location, we were always so concerned about price, price, price. We forgot to really weigh the value of this is a chef owned and operated restaurant. And leaning into that a little bit more because there's inherent value that comes with that when the chef is making every single item, pretty much that comes out of the hot side of the kitchen.
- [49:47]
A
Right. So back to like the root of today's conversation. We've covered ideation, now we're talking about planning and anal, really reverse engineering the menu to say does this menu align with who we say we are, what our mission is, what our values are? And then really from there, I mean, have we gotten much into the data retrieval and the analysis and how that weighs into the planning?
- [50:09]
B
Yeah. And the data retrieval part, this is where they're going out and getting it. And, and I, I put this here because in the analysis portion, it, it's amazing to me how many restaurants do not have accurate costs completed. Subjectively. We see about four out of every five restaurants do not have up to date costs. Some will be faster than others turning it around. Some will say, hey, we're going to need a couple weeks to go back and recost things. So that's an essential component is making sure we have that data and then also making sure that we're looking at specifically the menu data data. It's easy sometimes and people will get lost in point of sale systems reports. And there's paralysis by analysis and overwhelming amounts of data. We really focus on what's being shown on the menu and how's it performing within that space, whether it's in a digital space or a physical menu.
- [51:07]
A
So relative to retrieving data and doing the costing and making sure you're charging what you need to charge to get that profit. How often do you think people should be looking at this data and making adjustments?
- [51:19]
B
Oh, great question. We encourage teams to update their menu two to four times per year at sort of a minimum. Two times per year. And this is really just because we know that price is always going to increase. If I only update the menu once per year, I've now got to adjust prices on nearly the entire menu. If I do it twice a year, I only have to do half the menu at a time. Four times a year, a quarter of a year. So it's a little bit more gradual and that can be, soften the blow a little bit. As, as prices continue to increase, what.
- [51:51]
A
Are the things we can do to be proactive in order to maintain that cadence of four times a year price changes?
- [52:01]
B
It comes from a culture. There are teams that, like Michael's, where the Menu was something that they did every day. And there's other teams where we haven't gotten to it in about two or three years. And our advice to teams, especially when we finish a project, we launch a menu, you should be checking your sales either weekly, at least every other week just to see how things are performing. Right. Is the menu performing the way we expect it to do? Yes or no? If no, let's go back and refine and adjust. But, but doing that twice a month I think is important really for the team, but also to make it a cultural discussion, like a team wide discussion that enhances the culture and the focus on what's working well on our menu, what's not and how can we change it.
- [52:49]
A
And just constantly checking purchase orders, making sure that you're getting accurate pricing and if there's a scarcity in tomatoes or avocados or knowing what the costs of things are on a weekly basis by just cross referencing. But creating habits to track this stuff that you, if you're not tracking it, you'll never know when it sways and you're. Who's ever receiving that order? Do they really have the discipline to pay attention to the cost of eggs this week versus last week? Does that 20 year old care? You know, if they're the one receiving it, you have to create those habits and those values. And that back to what you said, that's that comes down to culture, how you execute every day. The expectation are we delivering on it?
- [53:33]
B
And this is something that came out of a discussion, it was a conference planning discussion for a conference that's coming up. But really the overwhelming feeling is that the teams that are really going to be successful are the ones that have great systems in place, whether they're independent to global chains. Global chains always usually have their systems down. But even though some time are so over bloated that it's hard to make change. But the ones who are going to be most successful in the years ahead will have these systems down in place. There's great technology platforms out there that can help with it. The one thing that I caution people is just making sure that technology is not getting in the way of your hospitality service delivery. It should just be there to enhance that delivery or your operations on the back end.
- [54:22]
A
So technology platforms aside, what are the systems that are integral or key to effective cost costing?
- [54:29]
B
I would say inventory management system like you said, who's going to know if the price on a case of limes jumps up $35 and we got to stop making mojitos or something. Right? Yeah.
- [54:41]
A
So inventory management is actually counting inventory but also counting the, the purchasing. Like what? Like what is it? Not just do we have it but has the price changed and what is our actual versus our theoretical.
- [54:55]
B
Yep. And, and there are a lot of great systems out there where, you know, food service purveyors, Cisco US Foods will make their prices available. These systems are able to scrape the active pricing that week and notify the restaurant if any significant change happens. Yeah.
- [55:10]
A
Is any AI out there right now that's helping with this that you're aware of?
- [55:15]
B
I'm sure that people are using it and deploying it. We use AI for menus to help with the ideation process and you know, there's many different parts and ways that you can deploy AI to help you make better menus. I wouldn't know as much on the back end for the backend operation systems, how those are being integrated.
- [55:35]
A
Yeah, there's some people in the audience today that can answer that. I will save that for the end of today's conversation and looking. Dude, can you believe we're almost an hour into this conversation and we're on.
- [55:45]
B
Are we really.
- [55:46]
A
We're on part or phase two. But that's my fault, man. I'm asking too many questions. I'm loving the conversation. So I think anything else you want to drop on us relative to planning and analysis before we move on to the next phase?
- [56:00]
B
No, just be the team. Be the 1 in 5 team that has their food costs down. Yeah. It's simply that. Right. You just need to know your food costs because if you don't, you're shooting blind. Right. You have no idea. And, and, and our value add to teams. When I come into a team and you know, what are we going to do for them? Our value add is adding anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar in new profit per guest per visit. So I'm playing for a quarter from that guest. And so if we have a cost that's out of alignment with theoretical versus actual because the recipe cost is wrong and gosh, the price has spiked and they haven't costed in a while, that's that quarter that I'm playing for and fighting for and we're just losing it because we have a recipe. Recipe that's out of alignment. Yeah.
- [56:48]
A
Moving on. So we've, we've covered ideation, we've covered planning and analysis and now we're moving on to development and strategy. Take it away.
- [56:55]
B
Yeah, this is my favorite part. Obviously menu engineering. This is right when we're in the thick of it and a lot. There's a common misconception about what we do is that we try to trick people into spending more money. I'm not out to trick anyone. In fact, if anyone's ever been to a restaurant and felt like they got tricked or deceived in any way way, they never go back, right? Very rarely would they go back. Why would they? Our goal is to help people find something that they love, that they're going to want to return back for. If they were out on the weekdays, they want to come back with their family on the weekend, or vice versa. So connecting items to guests they love, that's not always going to be. I said our backbone is profit, and that's why I'm there. But we do have to qualify things with, with subjective and tastes and preferences and things like that. So one thing question that we pose is, what are our bring them back items? And bring them back items. Are the items so good it's almost like you had a lasso and you got it around that customer and you know they're going to come back, you can pull them back in for that item because they loved it so much. My litmus test for this with teams is if your childhood hero or your favorite family member, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, whomever walk through the door of your restaurant and you get to pick one item to serve them just one single item from your menu, what is that item? And I force people to give me an answer here because they want to just say, oh, if I'm in this mood, if I'm in that mood, and it's like, no, no, I need you to get one. I'll listen to the others, but I need you to focus on that one. And if enough people in the room say that same item, it's like, all right, we found ourself a winner. Regardless of where that plays out on the profit scale, we know that we have a winner with that item.
- [58:48]
A
What are some common trends you see with people that develop that item that really work well? What does that item have in common?
- [58:54]
B
Focus on a singular item that you do well. The more narrow your focus can be. If I personally was to go out and start a restaurant, I would pick one item that we do really well. Well, do that over and over and over again in as small a space, in a little as footprint as you can if your goal is to be profitable and make a lot of money.
- [59:12]
A
So is the goal to build the whole brand around this one item or is it.
- [59:18]
B
That's what I would do to be competitive today.
- [59:20]
A
I agree with that statement 100%.
- [59:22]
B
And, and the reason is, is because it's so hard to stick out. And this is something that I talk about with teams is that there's an amazing restaurant. I have the menu actually here. It's Sailors Old Country Kitchen in Portland, Oregon. It opens at 4:30 in the afternoon. It's the home of the 72 ounce steak. So much so that they shape their menu out of this 72 ounce steak. But it's the type of place that you walk in and the portions are large, right? They're hanging off the edge of these giant plates. When you sit down, they bring you pickles and bread and just a lot of things that would be really challenging for a restaurant today to start out and try to do the same things. They couldn't do it because Sailors has the years and years of demand and customer trust and loyalty where when they open their doors at 4:30, they already have a line of 20, 25 people that are waiting to get in so they can continue to operate in that way that they have had for a number of years. That's core to their brand. It would be real hard to try to go and start the same type of restaurant today. It's a completely different world, completely different market.
- [60:34]
A
Behind every great restaurant is a great person. The key to being great is to be of service to others. And this holds true for all organizations, not just restaurants. After spending a month in Phoenix, Arizona being hosted by Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, I got to experience firsthand Fred's desire to serve. It all started when I got there. Fred gave me the keys to his house and to his office building. When Fred leaves work every day, I witnessed him go coach one of his two sons baseball teams. And when Fred's neighbor lost power when they were hosting their son's birthday party, Fred offered to host the party at his house. Eric, why are you sharing this? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And believe me when I say that the desire to serve extends to Fred's restaurant climb. There are no secrets or shortcuts to life or restaurant success. There's only discipline, hard work, and the desire to do the right thing. Fred and his team at Restaurant Systems Pro are here to serve you with the systems and resources to be more disciplined so you can do the hard thing, which nine times out of 10 is the right thing. With Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and the systems to create and implement checklists. On top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro also has their own native general ledger, and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve. And you know what? If you don't want to change your pos, that's absolutely fine, because Restaurant Systems Pro integrates with all major POS providers. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RSP and you will find a link to schedule a demo with their sales team. A demo I personally did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley and all 18 of our testimonials that we've recorded since the beginning of restaurant stoppable. Again, that's Restaurant Unstoppable.com RSP this episode is Made Possible by Me is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus, and nail food execution at scale. Consistency builds trust with your guest. Andrew Steven Staff no more messy spreadsheets or scattered systems. Whether they want to admit it or not, your team loves systems because systems equals peace of mind, because we all want to know what the job done right looks like. And M paints the picture of perfection and is the one source of truth for your entire team. By locking in recipes and training before service starts, M makes sure every dish is consistent, every team member is aligned, and every location runs like clockwork. So when the report rolls in after the sale, they tell the story you're after. Higher profits, better margins, and repeat guests. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable that's G-E-T M E-E-Z.com unstoppable. Yeah, I'm curious with that approach of, of what is the bringing back item and building a brand around that, does that seem to do better in more dense marketplaces?
- [63:56]
B
Probably, yes. But I don't think again, I don't think it's mutually exclusive to that. Sometimes we see people because of social media. You may get someone who travels two hours to your remote town because they saw a really great pasta that you do so especially well that nobody else is doing doing. And that could happen whether it's in the city or. And you know, sometimes we travel really long ways for great barbecue restaurants. Right. If you're down in Texas, you don't mind driving the extra 60, 70 minutes to get to the barbecue shop that you want to go to.
- [64:27]
A
Got it. So under this, this category or this, this phase of menu development, development and strategy, you know, focusing, what is the one thing that will bring people back, back. Putting our energy into doing that one thing better than everybody else. Streamlining, process, throughput around this one thing. You have some other bullet points under this. What items should we add or omit? So when, when, if your focus is on, you know, what are the one things that will or the few things that will bring them back, how do we know what to admit or add?
- [64:59]
B
We start with looking for what are single sku ingredient items. Are we buying one specific ingredient to make this one specific, specific dish? If yes, we need to validate and qualify that that dish should continue to be on the menu. If it's just the middle of the pack performer, and we're buying that one ingredient for that one dish, those usually are going to be some of the first items we look to omit. I can say that since the pandemic, you know, obviously there was a really, the pendulum swung to really tight and compact menus and that sort of continued. Right. I see very few people that when they update their menu, they're like, oh, we're going to add, add 10 new things. It's either one to one or they have less items than when we started the project. It's not always, again, I say, I'm here for profit. That's the backbone of what we do. Sometimes we may have an item that's in our growth share matrix term called a dog, which is low in sales, low in profit. But if it's part of that restaurant's DNA and it needs to live on the menu because, oh, we've been serving this since 19, 1948 when we open, then it has a special life and special place in the menu, even though it's not a great item for us.
- [66:12]
A
Got it. Any other. Can you think of an example when we would want to add something even though it goes against what you're sharing? Yeah.
- [66:21]
B
And we may add when we have an item that's a superstar item. And for us, stars are in the growth share matrix. They're high in profit, high in sales. And the growth share matrix is a four quad quadrant analysis matrix. It's anywhere that you look up menu engineering. The Boston Consulting Group created that in the mid-70s. Harvard Business Review has named it the number one most influential chart of all time. It takes in two factors, which is, well, three. Menu price, what are our costs and quantity sold. And that's what we use for our data analysis when we're looking at, at items that we need to add. If we have a superstar item, let's say crab Cakes are really. Well, this is an example we use. If we have crab cakes are a star item, high in profit, high in sales, I might go back to the chef and say, chef, can we make a few different variations of the crab cake to create a crab cake section? Could we have a Louisiana style crab cake, a Maryland style crab cake, you know, a Texas style crab cake? And then we, you know, our menu, it now has a whole pronounced section about crab cakes because that's a superstar item for us. Whenever we sell crab cakes, we know people love them, they want to come back for them, and they're a strong item for us to sell from a revenue and profit standpoint.
- [67:41]
A
I'm thinking ltos right now is where my mind goes with. This is like, go ahead.
- [67:46]
B
Yeah. Ltos are a great way to test things, right? And we encourage people to use their. And I do try not to use Akron limited time offers. And now we can call it limit lto. But the limited time offers, perfect testing ground for things. There has to be some knowledge that things are going to perform better when they are limited time offers than when they're added to the menu. One thing we run into a lot in the independent operator segment is specials that aren't special. Where regular customers know, oh, those are the same specials that they have every single day. And that's not using the power of limited time offers. Of course, effectively, it's common that we find that.
- [68:26]
A
Got it. What about this last bullet here? Where do we need to increase price.
- [68:35]
B
That'Ll be driven by costs of goods? If there's anything that's out of alignment, you know, if something spiked for us, like right now, ground beef is. Beef in general is just at its highest point.
- [68:46]
A
Right.
- [68:46]
B
Do we need to adjust price? Do we have to take things off of a menu? Sometimes, you know, maybe the 72 ounce steak that was part of our brand DNA, it's something that we don't even sell anymore. I don't know. It's probably not that far for sailors. But it. There's a number of different factors that would cause us to need to increase price. There is a fear around it. I have a phrase that I've. That I provide to frontline staff who are having to do this, which is simply, we refused to sacrifice quality, so we had to adjust our price. And that puts. If. If we have a guest who's expressing price resistance and we respond with, we refuse to sacrifice quality, no guest is going to be like, well, I want less quality. Right? That's just not going to be okay. Everyone can understand that. So it's one way of softening the blow of having. Having to bring prices up.
- [69:43]
A
Got it. So under the core of the development and strategy, this phase that we're discussing, which is the third phase on our list, you know, you have terms like menu engineering, menu mix and development and pricing and promotion. Does the word menu engineering encompass all of menu mix development, pricing and promotion? Is that kind of all under the umbrella? Correct. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- [70:06]
B
Yeah, I would say so. I look at menu engineering as everything that happens for your menu's content and strategy before we go and to design.
- [70:16]
A
Okay, so now we're talking menu mix. That's kind of like what your offering is.
- [70:20]
B
Yep. Yeah. The product mix that you have, you know, how many beef dishes, how many chicken, how many fish?
- [70:25]
A
I mean, does the. Does the menu layouts or. No, that's the next bullet menu design. Correct. Should I hold off on that? I don't wanna get too far ahead of you.
- [70:32]
B
It's a good transition.
- [70:33]
A
Okay, good transition. One, one question before we transition. That was in the back of my mind, but I was saving it before we move forward in this world of. Of, you know, what is optimal for, like, what are the stars?
- [70:43]
B
Right.
- [70:45]
A
You. I mean, if you're listening to this and you eat out often, if you do a lot of market research to see what your competitors are doing, there's a lot of similarity in almost most of the major restaurants you go to, because there seems to be a pattern of what the consumer wants, what's trending. And I mean, you can find a crab cake in almost every menu you go to.
- [71:06]
B
Right.
- [71:07]
A
Is, are we just, like, approaching this, the sea of sameness? Is that what happens when we all just try to do the same thing, just to see what performs well?
- [71:14]
B
In a way, yes. But I'm inspired by the fact that in the the U.S. you know, 60 to 70% of the restaurants and food service businesses are independent restaurants. And one thing that I try to help independent operators understand is that their competitive advantage is their ability to adapt and change quickly. I use the analogy of the big companies that are out there are kind of like big giant cruise ships. They turn on a really wide berth and they turn very slowly. Whereas the independent operator. You're in a speedboat, you can turn figure 8, zoom off the other way. But if you're not. If you're leaving your menus and saying, oh, we only do it once a year, you're not leaning in on that competitive advantage that you have, which is the ability to be flexible and to change and adapt.
- [72:03]
A
Yeah. And the consumer is changing what they like faster than ever before. Whatever viral trend there is is what they want. Right now it's almost like whiplash. The, the rate at which it's changing. To keep up with that, it's got to be a struggle. But we've unpackaged ideation, planning and analysis, development and strategy, and now we're moving on to menu design. Take it away.
- [72:25]
B
One thing before we just jump into that, because you said something that just reminded me of something that's worth sharing, which is there's research out there that shows if a guest comes to your restaurant and gets the same thing every single time they come somewhere around eight or nine times of getting the same thing in a row, their consumption falls off significantly, basically the time diminishing returns. And that's where we need those limited time offers is to reset that clock a little bit bit right. To get them so they break that monotony. And. And now we've got them starting back at zero or one on when they're back in that item again.
- [73:03]
A
Well, also collecting the data on that consumer, whether that be with open table or resy or you know, or your, your POS system, tracking the relationship, the, the past orders from that individual. And if you see like that they order the same thing a few times, cause that disruption. Be like, I see you love fish. You get the, the hadock every time. Have you tried or you know, halibut, like, like changing it up and seeing the patterns and trying to cause that disrupt before it diminishes.
- [73:35]
B
I love that. And, and it. This is jumping ahead a little bit, but I'm gonna share it now because it's the perfect time. Greg had a great friend whose name was Tom Frank. And Tom Frank was one of the people on the original PF Chang's team. And Tom had a few different things that he introduced to the team that worked out really well for them, like the tableside sauce that servers could give an item if it enhanced the guest meal. But one thing that Tom taught me was at the end of the meal when he would pack up someone's takeaway order or takeaway, that they're bring it back to the table in the bag and then pull out a takeout menu and show them. I've circled what you had today and I put a star next to what you should try next time. And I'm just going to tuck that in here. And those types of nudges are really powerful because when that guest gets home with that takeout bag. They're not just throwing that takeout menu in the trash because you've made it personal to them. You've taken something that we buy by the tens of thousands, individualized it with a couple circles and a star, and it now signals to that guest that when they return, oh, ah, Tom said we should try that thing new, but, you know, I really like that old thing, but let's try one new one old. You know, that's the type of conversations we want to have happen. I love that, that. That's a powerful one. And one case that I make for having tactile menus for takeout.
- [75:02]
A
I love that. So when you say tactile, something that is just tangible. Tangible. Got it, got it. Okay. So I think this is a good transition, right, into menu design because we're kind of talking about it right now. Right. So get into many design. What do we need to know?
- [75:15]
B
Yeah, menu design. The most important thing here is to get everything right right before you do this. Because every change that you make once you're in the design phase is costly, especially if you're working with a designer who's out of house. Right. Changes are how we run up really high design bills. I ask clients to also provide their designers with the inspiration. Right. What design inspiration do they love? They might have a mood board, a things that these are color palettes or fonts that they really love. As much information as you can provide to your designer is, you know, how you'll get a good end product. One reason that this is two separate parts in the process is because people often confuse menu engineering with menu design. And I'm everything right before design. Once we're in the design side, I'm not going to tell a rest the of restaurant, what color they should use, what font they should use, unless it negatively impacts our strategy. So if they pick a font and I can't read it and it's on a menu board and I can't read it from 20ft away with my glasses on, I will then interject and say, we've got to adjust this because it's going to negatively impact our strategy. Otherwise, it's not my choice and it's not my duty to tell them, you know, how they should go with design in their brand. And that's the really fun part. Design is subjective as well. So for me, you know, we have teams, designers that we work with, and the challenge for me is that my mind works in black and white and spreadsheets and profit. I can show you the Difference from when we started to now. Whereas design starts to go into more the art and subjective opinions. You know, something that's emotional different than the other. Yeah.
- [76:58]
A
So. So relative to menu design, you have these sub bullets here. Inspiration, analysis, style guide and selection. Design, editing and selection. Do you want to get into those deeper?
- [77:08]
B
Yeah, the inspiration. I'm going to click back to one of the menus that I had up here. And this is Thomas Keller's Bouchon in Las Vegas. And this is from a number of years ago. I don't know if they still use the same menu, but when you sat down at the table, it was set with a folded pieces of paper, and it was almost like a wax butcher paper. When you opened it up from being folded, it turns out that that's the entire menu. Well, it's brilliant. It was inexpensive to make. It's fantastic. Because they know when someone goes to a Thomas Keller restaurant, they usually want to leave with something. So this is perfect. They can take the menu with them. So great menus don't need to be expensive to convey value and quality. Quality, you know, And I should touch on this because this is one of the menus that I admire most because of its impact. And the menu is. It's a scotch menu at a wine bar restaurant. They charted their scotches on this side of the menu from light to rich, from delicate to smoky. And they chart pointed out where all these scotches in their offerings land on that chart. Well, my buddy and I, and this was back, way back in my drinking days, we were going up to have two pints of beer, and this was the menu sitting on the table. And because their design showed up this way, in a way I've never seen a menu before, we looked at this and said, we've got to try something from each quadrant. So we know the difference between something that's smoky and rich. Rich versus a delicate and light scotch. So when the bartender finally came over to us, we asked, hey, can we, you know, we do a tasting? You know, we'll just split four drinks in half so we can kind of taste around the world. And he's like, yeah, I got you. They never had to say a word to us. They presented us this menu. We went from going to spend maybe $20 on a couple pints to ordering eight shots. 90, you know, it was four that we split for four shots, right. And so we spent probably 85, $90. And we were thrilled by it. We were so happy. And never once did we consider price. We were just more excited about the adventure that we were going on and they weren't hiding the price. You can actually. It actually was afterwards that I noticed they have the price in the bullets as their. The plot points is where they price. And so when a menu design has the ability to impact hacked a guest choice without a single word being said, that is really special.
- [79:47]
A
Do you have tons of examples of menus like this?
- [79:50]
B
I. I have like a. It's a. Like an architectural sheet, like what old architects used to have when they had blueprints and stuff filled with different menus.
- [80:00]
A
I might have to have you come back in like a quarter or two and we might have to go deep into just design examples and the, the benefit. The power of different. That would be a lot of fun and just. Yeah. There is a visual component component to today's episode. If you're listening to this audio only, be sure to head over to our YouTube channel if you want to see these examples. This is episode 1228. Or you can search Restaurant Unstoppable Sean Willard and you can find this episode. And we're at about the hour and. And 10 minute mark. If you want to jump right to.
- [80:34]
B
That section, then I'm gonna. I will go into speed because I want to get through these all in.
- [80:38]
A
Yeah, I'll. Dude, I'll do two hours if you have the time, man, you know me.
- [80:41]
B
I didn't know if you had a.
- [80:42]
A
No, man, I'll keep going, but I want to respect your time. So just. So do you want to finish up menu design or do you want to move forward?
- [80:48]
B
Yeah, I, I would say with menu design there needs to be alignment with everything. Right. The menu design is so important because it is the single document that reflects the entirety of the business. If I go to a restaurant and you open the mess, the menu and the pages are sticky because someone had spilled a drink and didn't clean it properly. That's a reflection on the restaurant. They've now set the mood for my expectations going forward in the same way. And there's different bodies of research around this that if a menu is a little bit heavy or cutlery is a little bit heavier, that our perception is that it's more valuable when they have that. I also want menus to be highly functional like that stand the test of time. So I work with a great team out of Scotland called Super Tough Menus and they have a menu that I can run through a commercial dishwasher and it comes out looking fantastic. And that gets us more longevity because nothing is sadder for Me than getting hands a sad and beat up menu. I get that it happens. And there are times where when I go work with the team, I just ask, okay, when I arrive, just if I can pick up a full set of your physical menus. Now they know I'm there specifically for the menus. And sometimes the menu that gets slipped into that pile will be a dirty, sticky menu. And it, it amazes me that they're handing that to me. Me knowing that that's the only thing that I'm looking at. What are they now doing to their customer? And so yeah, that's why they're so special. It's like a. I view menus as a window in to the entire business.
- [82:37]
A
I am curious before we move on to this, you said you focus on everything up to menu design. So ideation, planning and analysis, development and strategy. And you outsource or you, you don't do the, the creative side, the, the visual appeal side. That's not your wheelhouse. But I'm curious, who do you go to? Who's your inspiration? Who's the person that's fir. Like that's front of mind when you think of who. Who's good at building out visually appealing menus.
- [83:03]
B
Really is in the eye of the beholder. Because if a restaurant has a prescriptive like we want to stick within this brand style guide, they're happy when it looks exactly like their style guide side. If another person wants more creativity, it's sort of a match, you know, the right person with the, the right person. If they want more creative and artistic influence, then we find that right designer for them and, and I should qualify that. It's not that I just leave people high and dry at the mini design time. Right. Every time that our clients come up with a draft, we jump on a call, we review it together, go over what changes we need to turn back. I, I will only share my thoughts about design when asked or as I mentioned earlier, if it interrupts our content and strategy and our goals.
- [83:50]
A
But there's no one that comes to mind for you that you're like, this person is doing some interesting things, some innovative things when it comes to design. Okay.
- [83:58]
B
Actually, yeah, that's a perfect one. And I have, I was just in London, like I mentioned, and I went to a restaurant that, that's really special. It's an Indian restaurant named Dishoom. It's well known in London. A lot of people know it worldwide. But they had their beverage menus where the covers of the beverage menu, they're held together by a piece of tape on the binding. And it's cut out cardboard boxes from like a case of beer. That's their menu cover. That's. I saw this and I was like, that's brilliant. It's cost effective. It's on brand with the entire vibe and feel of the restaurant. It's unique to them. And that's when we hit that level of like, this aligns with everything that your brand is doing. That's when we know we have something special and the designer should reflect that too.
- [84:58]
A
Got it, got it. Okay. So I do have some curiosities about menu design. When it comes to the intersections of technology, we're talking about tangible, tactile menus. Right now there's this huge trend of people getting away from the tactile, tangible menu and going more towards the tablet experience. Or using your own phone, scan this qr or if we're in the QSR space, there's the digital menu boards. Do you want to speak to that?
- [85:27]
B
Yeah. That was something that for us, the lessons came out of the pandemic for us because some people were forced into 100% digital menus. What we know is that our attention spans were already diminishing. And on our phones, there's actively other things that are going to distract us. So we have a very small window of a guest's attention. If on a normal printed menu, let's say it's a one panel menu and we start with the appetizers and the salads and the sandwiches, and then we get to the entrees. That feels right where a printed tactile menu may be in the digital space. We'll flip the script a little bit. If I want to sell appetizers, I'll start with appetizers, but then I'm going to go right into entrees. And I do that because if the person's there for a salad or a sandwich, they'll find it. They'll keep scrolling because they're looking for something that they're there for value or they love that sandwich.
- [86:27]
A
Whichever.
- [86:28]
B
The reason may be, but value seekers will find the value. It's the people who are making choices off gut instinct, feeling tight on time. What looks good? I want to try to get our best items right at the top of the list. You can almost go descending order by what are our strongest items.
- [86:49]
A
Yeah, your stars.
- [86:49]
B
Yeah.
- [86:51]
A
Yep, Got it. But I mean also too, this idea of changing now that we have digital menus. I think one of the biggest benefit of a digital menu is that you can, you can literally change it weekly and not have to worry about the cost of buying new menus and switching out the old printed menus. Will your consumers like that? Probably not. But it's the point being is that there is no real excuse to be to have your prices reflect as close to possible market prices in any given time.
- [87:24]
B
Can you rephrase that for me just for a little, Just so I make sure I understand.
- [87:27]
A
A lot of the resistance to changing your menu prices is having to update all of your menus, the cost associated with that, the time associated with that. With the digital world we're in, we can go on wherever our menu is hosted, we can update the price and it can push push to all platforms. Especially if we're on a tool like marquee, right. That will aggregate your menu to all digital third party platforms with one click.
- [87:58]
B
We love the ability to do that. Right. And it works well in from quick service restaurants, even up to some full service restaurants where digital menus work really well. A lot of it's generationally driven, like who is, you know, are we dealing with people who are less technology advanced? Right. So we see generational differences in people's preference between print menus and digital menus. Love the flexibility of digital menus. But it's important that we meet people where they are. If we try to say right now you have to order off your own phone. Well, I've been working in an office, I've been on the phone, I've been on my computer. The last thing I want to do when I came to lunch today was look at another screen, right? That may be the case. It may be the opposite where gosh, I just need to get in, get out. And it's so much faster when I can just order on my phone. So being able to meet people. So we recommend a hybrid model as being a strong one. Like I mentioned, I like having takeout menus that I can circle and send people home with a message. So they have our menu in the drawer of their desk or kitchen. One way that I'll navigate that is on those takeout menus to avoid having to reprint them and incur the cost associated with that. We may omit the prices listed on the takeout menu and then provide a QR code that links you to the order site where you can get the exact prices. And what we might do is in the back information like put the dollar rank like $2 or something like that sort of information to give people a cue. But that's one way to go around it and I've worked with teams where it was a franchise organization who I can't name, but they had made five or six changes in price and had required their franchisees to repurchase new takeout menus. And the opposition to that, obviously. Oh yeah, rightfully so, was very strong.
- [90:00]
A
Right.
- [90:02]
B
So it is definitely a balance between budgets, capabilities and how adaptable do we need to be.
- [90:09]
A
Right? We've covered a lot so far, man. We've unpackaged ideation, planning and analysis, development and strategy, menu design. We still have pre launch, new menu launch in operations to unpack. So let's, let's shift this thing into fourth or fifth gear and kind of touch on these subjects and then package. So pre launch, what do we need.
- [90:28]
B
To know pre launch, is this under, focused on or underappreciated time? That if you've never done it before, you don't understand how challenging it can be until you're doing it. And it's basically the day that you are transitioning your menu. So we're going to close dinner with our old menu and we're going to open up for lunch the next day with our new menu. Well, you've got to change the prices in your point of sale system on your website. You got to have your takeout menus in, you got to have your third party menus updated and changed. You've got to verify that all the buttons work within that point of sale system. There's a lot of opportunities for mistakes if we try to rush it. One strategy that we found for some teams this is effective is they want will depending on the size of their menu, of course they'll take within their point of sale system, they'll take their existing buttons and just duplicate them and leave those duplicates off. They'll go through and make the changes over the course of a week or two weeks. Get all those, you know, they verified it with reports that they can turn out and all the prices are aligned. Then when they get to that pre launch day, all they've got to do is turn off the buttons for the existing and report replace them with the new items that are going on. That also gives us a nice break in the data. Like it's very clear, okay, here's old menu to new menu depending on how we're measuring. And because of this, and we've only just talked about publishing it, guest facing and customer facing, we still have our internal facing which is making sure that our kitchen is teamed, kitchen team is trained on this, that our front of house team is trained on this trained on this. So there's just so many moving parts that I break this out into its own piece of the process because it deserves that much care and attention. And the reason why it's actually on this next slide. I was at a Greek restaurant here in Chicago and they had on the menu a combination plate for 23.95. Fantastic. When I go out to eat, and this was a lovely lesson that Greg taught me when we would go out, dine out, is we keep one copy of the menu with us. Usually I'm eating alone, so it's nice to have something to look at and not just be staring into space. But at the end, I'll pull the menu back out and I'll pull out my receipt and what I'm looking for is just a make sure things are correct. I also look for how teams are naming their items but focus on the price here specifically. Their combination plate was ringing in at $21.95 and it was listed on the menu at 23.95. They were losing $2 every time they sold a combination plate. I mentioned earlier, I'm playing for 25 to 50 cents is a huge success if we can drive that. So this combination plate is taking us in another direction. Now, this can happen easily because they have such a vast menu with, you know, probably close to 150 or 200 total items. If we really looked at it, and no customer is going to come up and say, hey, by the way, way, you're not charging me enough. Right. They'll tell you the the other direction. If you're charging more, they'll be sure to catch that. And so who knows how long this was living in their button. But it could be. And. And this happened with a team who is very good at keeping track of their point of sale system. But one of the specials that they were running on Tuesday night, let's say it was half price wings, was, well, two sizes of those half price wings were not ringing in at the proper price. They were undercharging by a dollar. But it wasn't caught because they were so good about the normal operations, they forgot about this one tiny discount on a Tuesday night.
- [94:12]
A
All it takes is one button.
- [94:13]
B
Yeah. And that change that had lived in their restaurants for three or four months and back of the envelope cost them 15 to $20,000 easy.
- [94:24]
A
Wow. It's just amazing. We live in such a complex world and all it takes is one little detail that can result in compound and be, you know, 10,000 plus dollars. You know, that just blows My mind.
- [94:37]
B
We'Ve seen something as simple as someone just doing a hard return when they didn't intentionally mean to. And it creates a little bit of white space around an item can be powerful enough to change people's purchase behavior. It happened with a team that they had this bowl on their lunch menu, and it was a superstar in sales, but it just didn't seem like it reflected their brand very much. And I asked them about this. Are you trying to sell more of this bowl? I said, no, no, not at all. It's just there serve a need. Okay. And when we buried it back in the way it was supposed to be, things went back to normal, but it was just that small little error.
- [95:14]
A
So it was a little. It was an indent on the print that made it stand out a little bit more.
- [95:18]
B
Yeah, yeah. It was just a little bit of spacing between the other items.
- [95:20]
A
That goes back to menu engineering, just design and how you can do little things. Now, if that was intentional with a star, right, where you intentionally put an indent to make it stand out and to pull the eye and you put that in the top right hand quadrant and indent it, you know, like, it's amazing how those intentional things can have a huge impact. Back to this idea of the pre launch. How soon before the launch of a menu should you start that process in your. In your estimation?
- [95:49]
B
In an ideal world, and this is. We're never in an ideal world. I would say you have two weeks of Runway to go through and train your staff on the new menu that's ahead. We encourage teams. We call it the menu behind the menu. So we may have a one page, front and back menu, but we've got the menu behind the menu that goes into far more detail about, you know, the type of beef that we're buying for a steakhouse, the type of cocktail.
- [96:14]
A
Style, the story behind it, the history, the.
- [96:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. And we don't require that necessarily. Servers don't need to memorize that. But we find that servers want the number knowledge because they want to be able to talk about their food and be familiar with it when they get asked a question and not have to say, oh, let me check with the chef. And so just providing that menu behind the menu is especially important. And then I think I have it on here. Oh, maybe I took it off. Oh, it's coming up. Training your staff is another thing too, because one of the ways that a menu, New menu launch can fail is if the staff has a lot of pushback. Like they don't like Doing it because it's changed.
- [96:54]
A
Yeah, it's homework. They just committed their memory to. You know, just like it's not easy to remember a menu. The details, the allergies, like all these things that you have to be on the hook for to be able to upsell the, you know, it's, it's a lot of work and if you do that regularly. I could not be a server at a farm to table restaurant where they're changing that thing weekly. I would be so bad at it.
- [97:18]
B
And it's. I agree. And it was one of the way for me that was the first thing when I started at the steakhouse go Gosh Back in 2005 I felt the same way that I'm never going to know and understand this menu. And now 20 years later I can tell you that the sweet potato mash come with a port wine demi glaze with the eight ounce filet. Right. And it's like once it's up there, it's up there and. But we have to have systems where we make learning fun and easy. And I'll talk about that in the next phase as we kind of move into launch.
- [97:46]
A
So back to pre launch. Are there any tools that you, you promote or make people aware of to make the POS and third party menu management better?
- [97:55]
B
No, you mentioned one earlier and there are a number of them out there working towards like update one menu and it pushes to all. I, in my position, I stay away from recommending one technology platform ever because I know at some point a customer's client may become frustrated with that and I can't have that attributed to me because I have no control over its use, its design, its build. I may say something like hey, like Toast for example is probably has the largest market share in point of sale right now. Maybe maybe not used to be micros back in the day. So I will work more with generalities that say, you know, a lot of people are using this 100%.
- [98:39]
A
I mean I, that's why I only promote the tools and services that are referred to me organically because it's like, you know, that the world's moving so fast. What was the best today might not be the best tomorrow. Or maybe they go public and their values change. Like there's a lot of variables there. Okay, so we still have two more items, two more phases to touch on. We, we touched on ideation, planning and analysis, development and strategy, menu design pre launch. Now we're, now we're actually, we're launching the menu new menu launch, get into.
- [99:07]
B
It this is the my favorite day launching the new menu. There should be. We always encourage teams to really make this fun, gamify it as much as possible. If we're adding new items, tasting the items together is fun. Having the chefs break out from the back of house and explain the dishes and the processes that go in them helps bond the team and break the divide between front of house versus back of house makes us a little bit more cohesive. And like we said earlier about the menu, behind the menu, staff generally want to have the knowledge. They want to know what tastes like spicy, sweet, savory, bitter. And so by making this fun, it can be motivational for your staff. We may also introduce games if we can. You'd be amazed what a $25 Visa gift card can do to motivate a staff. If you have a competition on a Friday or Saturday night and say, Hey, $25 gift card to the person that sells the most desserts tonight, that can. And you get competition. That goes like this, where Mark might walk over to Charlie and Mark, Charlie, how many desserts have you sold? 16. Okay, I've got 14. Watch this. And Mark's just going to go knock out four desserts because he's playing for that $25. So anytime we can gamify. And I have one game that I call Million dollar hot seat. And I play this game at our independent restaurant in New Jersey.
- [100:33]
A
Jersey.
- [100:34]
B
At the beginning of the shift, I. Before the shift, I'd go out and buy five individual lottery tickets. If we had five staff members. Seven. If we had seven. And then as we're in the shift meeting and we're going over the new menu, I'd call people individually to go sit in the million dollar hot seat. We'd know, okay, the mega millions is $245 million. And I say, Mark, for $245 million, what comes in our pesto? Chicken, penne. And Mark's got to hit all the points. It's grilled chicken breast with penne pasta, which is hollow pencil point pasta. Our pesto is made with pure basil, garlic, olive oil, and pine nuts. It comes with tomatoes. And I, as the manager, don't say whether he's right or wrong. I would throw that to the group. Did he get it all? Yes. No. Yes. Yeah. Oh, you forgot something, Mark. What did you forget? Broccoli. Did he get it? Yeah. All right, Mark, here's your chance to win $245 million. It seems futile. We paid a dollar for that ticket, and it can not be significant. Of a cost. But we knew it was impactful because I was up after one Saturday counting our front takeout register, end of the shift, counting the front drawer. And one of the staff members came up and said, said with their lottery ticket. And they said, hey, Sean, if I win the mega millions, I'll give you a million or two. And I said, oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Right. But I knew that that just had this lingering excitement that they had because they now had this lottery ticket with a chance to win $245 million that they got from knowing the menu knowledge.
- [102:13]
A
Yeah. And I think also just gamifying it in working it into your rituals and your routines. Like all these things become rituals and routines and a part of your identify, like your identity and how you do things, your. And when. When you know that you're going to be quizzed. The psychological effect of I don't want to be the idiot in the room. Like, you're gonna make sure you do your homework.
- [102:34]
B
Yeah. And that's something we encourage teams to actually, when they're making this change. Like when we ask, like that million dollar hot seat in this case, they're sitting because we were playing the game. But normally I would ask if we're gonna grill somebody, have them stand up, up formally as if they're at the table. Grill them then. Because if they have stage fright or they're not great at public speaking, you want that to come out and be worked through internally with your team before they're out in front of the customer.
- [103:04]
A
Get those reps. Yeah.
- [103:06]
B
So it's really a great time to make sure that people are describing the dish that we want to make sure that it's described, how it's prepared.
- [103:13]
A
And I would even say this isn't a quarterly thing when you launch the menu. It's a daily thing that you resurface to keep it fresh.
- [103:20]
B
Yeah, I would have an item. Yeah, you would have regular quiz items. Whether you do it on certain days of the week or you have a little bit more fluidity with having it. But it's one of those things that you'll want to check in on pretty regularly.
- [103:34]
A
How soon should you notify your guest of a new menu launch?
- [103:39]
B
That's a great question. We encourage teams to have a little bit of time for like a soft launch of the minimum menu. Like the day you're rolling it out. Don't go screaming it from the mountaintops. Let it run for a week. Work out some kinks if we need to change anything on the fly. The worst Thing would be we change the menu, we tell everybody about it and now we're slam busy and we found out that, gosh, we were charging $2 less for that combination plate. And so a little bit of a soft launch is nice for your regular guests. Include them in the process just, just as you would almost your staff. When you're going through that ideation process and information gathering, you might talk to your guests at that time and see what they're looking for. What about your email list?
- [104:21]
A
Are you communicating to your email list in advance?
- [104:26]
B
I would do that around on the email list. If we were doing a private tasting like, hey, we're going to launch this menu and we're going to host a private event for you guys that are in the know then yes, absolutely. If we, we were doing that email blast for that certain day, I'd do it on whatever day is the hard launch for that day. Got it. Okay.
- [104:43]
A
We are close to the end, man. We've covered a lot. We have one more topic. Is it time to move on to the next and final phase or do you want to mention anything else relative to menu launch?
- [104:56]
B
No, I think that's good with menu launch. One last thing about menu launch. It's important when you launch your new menu that you take the time to pin your new menu at the top of all your social medias and listing sites. I had the chance to work with Google when they were rolling out menus under Google My Business. And one of the things that I expressed that made me so frustrated is that even if we're managing the Google My business, we don't control what items are going to get highlighted. We don't control who gets to post a picture and say this is our menu. So sometimes we're left with pictures from three years ago and that can confuse a guest because they saw a price, I saw the price on the website or online and it was less. So when you make that new menu change, just go in, pin yours to the top of your social media pages, all your listing sites where you can so that that's readily accessible and available to people that are getting the latest information.
- [105:53]
A
Got it. Okay. The last section, operations. Yeah.
- [105:58]
B
And we live here 85% of the year, 90% of the year that we're just in regular operations. This is goes on to what we talked about earlier. How many times should you be checking out on your sales mix? Whether it's weekly, every other week or gosh, we were short on managers so we're doing it once a month now. It's that ongoing menu analysis. This is also in regular operations where we're introducing our limited time offers. We may be doing running promotions as well, you know, discounted happy hours, holidays events, that kind of thing. But it's just this ongoing and continuous marketing that's in this operation. So it's sort of a catch all.
- [106:40]
A
Yeah. So it's, it's paying attention to what's working, what's not working, leaning into what's working, sharing that information. Optimizing.
- [106:47]
B
Yeah. And, and it, it's presented in this way as we kind of flip to like the last page here. Going out in the cycle is because, because we're always in this cycle somewhere regardless, at any given time you're somewhere on this process. Oftentimes we're there in the operation side. And it's my favorite moment is that one when you're in regular operations and you realize we gotta make a change.
- [107:10]
A
Yeah. I love, I love the idea of a quarterly rhythm. I think it, it aligns with so much that we've learned from DX3 I think is, you know, Stephen R. Covey's rhythm of communic tractions. The Level 10 meetings and rocks and quarterly meetings. And this idea of getting to a quarterly rhythm of you know, testing, retesting, refining, finding out what sticks, having seasonal things, the seasons are in quarters. There's this natural rhythm to quarters. And I love having this, this circular repetitious process laid out for us today. And again that process is ideation, planning and analysis, development and strategy, menu design, pre launch, new menu launch in operations and then back to the top of with ideation. And it's never stopping. And I think being, it's like as a commercial pilot, when I was learning to become a commercial pilot, they taught us always be ahead of the airplane. You know, you don't want to be where the airplane is because when you're flying you can't. There's not much you can do when you're up in the air and you know, the stuff hits the fan. You got to anticipate what's going to happen happen. You got to anticipate markets. You got to anticipate by being ahead of it. I think just having that four months out almost at all times is super powerful.
- [108:29]
B
Yeah. And especially for independent restaurants, I'd say that they have the most challenge just because of the way things are that you know, sometimes they lack the systems or the discipline to stick to that four times a year change cycle. As we go up into segments that are, you know, larger chains, those they usually have pretty good systems down. They'll know that we might change our core menu this time. And we run six or eight LTOs. Yeah.
- [108:55]
A
We had a lot to unpackage today. Again, these are seven phases and I have some exciting news. Sean has agreed to make himself available once a month. We're starting in Restaurant Stoppable Network to do a menu engineering power hour. So if you have questions about menu engineering, if you want to share your screen, if you want feedback and you want feedback from somebody who's dedicated their life to this subject, you can now get that in Restaurant Unstoppable Network. Any final thoughts? Any final recommendations? Any last words? Now's the time to get it out.
- [109:30]
B
I would say make sure you keep the menus fun. It should feel fun and enjoyable when you're going through the menu development process.
- [109:40]
A
Process.
- [109:40]
B
If it starts to feel like a task, try to identify why because it really, it's a time of creativity and reflection and, you know, team building. Right. That's one thing that people take away from our workshops together is I didn't realize how much team building that was going to be a part of this. And it's, it's a nice moment, you know, if you're doing it on a quarterly cycle for everyone on the team to pause and put their menu engineer hat on and say, what are we doing well and how can we improve? Yeah.
- [110:11]
A
So again, this episode is 1228. If you want to find this episode show notes, you can search that you're going to be making yourself live in the network. And how do we, how do we connect if we want to maybe work with you, learn from you on a more one, on one basis, hire you. What's the best way to connect?
- [110:32]
B
Yep. On our website, MenuEngineers.com engineers with an NFT s it. We do a free 15 minute menu checkup that people can sign up for pretty much at any time. I usually save it for Fridays because I always depending on the weeks, but It's a free 15 minute menu checkup. We usually end up going 30, 45 minutes. Sometimes I just kind of share the low hanging fruit. I tell people, you can just take this and run with it. You never have to call me again and you're going to have a better menu. Usually that's not the case. People want to, you know, go a little bit further down the rabbit hole and really start to put their mind and attention on building the best menus that they can make.
- [111:16]
A
Got it. And I, I do think we landed on Fridays. So I'M just going to throw it out there. First Menu engineering power hour will be on the 31st. October 31st. Um, head over to restaurant unstoppable.com Sean Willard. That's S E A N W I L L A R D to get the official time and date. If it changes, we will. This first one's on me. I want to make sure you guys can join this conversation and all conversations going forward. If you need the help, we'll have the. The zoom link over there waiting for you so you can engage with Sean and ask your questions. Again. Head over to restaurantstoppable.com Sean Willard to join us for a live conversation. And before I let you go, Sean, I gotta have you call somebody out. That's how I found you. Stephanie Robson called you out. I'm happy she did. I'm looking forward to this partnership collaborating with you going forward. But who do you respect and admire? Who's somebody you think I should make an example of?
- [112:13]
B
There are so many people that I respect and admire. I consider myself a perpetual student of the industry, so I look up to everyone. Someone who I have had the opportunity to work closely with. He and I sit on a advisory board for an app company. His name is Howard Gordon and Howard was one of the original, not original, but one of the. The ground level of Cheesecake Factory. He was with them through over 100, maybe 150 locations of growing that business. And Cheesecake Factory is such a fascinating menu. It's probably the menu we get asked most often about, like why do they get to have such a big menu? And Howard just has some really great perspective on the industry, has done it for a while, knows a plethora of people out there in the world and just a wealth of knowledge and capable of adapting that knowledge to the executive C suite, down to the independent operator in a really kind way.
- [113:17]
A
Howard Gordon, look out. I'm coming after you. It'd be an honor to get you on the show. And again, this is where I say thank you so much. Sean. You thank for sharing your knowledge and your time going forward as a, as a mentor in the community, as an expert in our community, there is no questioning my man. You are unstoppable.
- [113:33]
B
Thank you, Eric. Much appreciated. And you are as well.
- [113:35]
A
Cheers. If today's episode stirred something in you, if you're feeling a little unstoppable, you're not alone. Join us at Restaurant Unstoppable Network where we are guiding restaurant owners to proven experts, tools and services based on real world success stories. You'll get access to my network of restaurant owning mentors, handpicked industry experts and organically referred vendors. You'll get access to these individuals through workshops, power hours, mentoring sessions and product demonstrations. Multiple events, live events every week. You'll get access to me twice a month where I'll answer any of your questions and you get access to all the recordings through RU Network Podcast, early access ad free bonus content all pushed directly to your phone. Plus the Unstoppable our closed source AI tool fed with over 2,400 hours of transcripts from the best in the biz and all future conversations that we have, whether that be bonus content or episodes all fed to the AI Daily access to our private Facebook group. And I think this is the coolest part, the ability to influence future content. Here at Restaurant Unstoppable, your product problems are my priority. Look, you don't have to do it alone. As a matter of fact, you will go further if you go together and you are the average of those you surround yourself with. And at Restaurant Unstoppable Network, you're surrounding yourself with the best. Head over to restaurantunstoppable.com live if you want all this, including the live events, and if all this sounds appealing but you don't really want access to join us live, then just head over to restaurantstoppable.com R U library.