Earlier this month, we sent The Real Greek’s brand new menu suite off to the printer’s (DELICIOUS new souvlaki grills available in a taverna near you now).
As anyone involved with menus knows, Menu Print Day is one of the scariest days of the year.
But there are ways to make it less stressful.
These are my top tips:
💾 Create a central master file (a simple spreadsheet will do) to check spellings, allergen info and prices against, then save time in your next menu update by recycling the same file as your starting point for updates.
🔃 Proof each menu in at least three separate rounds. First up, get the food team to check that the content, allergen signposts and pricing is correct. Next, ask marketing to check for tone and messaging, then a separate round to double-check prices, allergens and spellings + look out for typos.
🕯️For bonus points, conduct a fourth round in your restaurant – at night time! – to check for legibility. You’ll be amazed how differently a menu performs in a candlelit dining room compared to a brightly lit office.
❓While you’re there, ask a few customers if the new menu makes sense to them.
⏰ Agree a realistic timeline for each round of proofs. Don’t try to squeeze them all into the print day itself – especially if you have lots of menus.
🎯 Put a single person in charge of liaising with the designer and printer. Ask everyone else to send their notes and suggestions to that person, so they can forward corrections in a single, clear email, organised by menu and menu section.
👩🏻💻 Every new edit needs a new round of proofing, not just to check that the requested corrections have been made correctly (tick them off as you go through) but also to make sure the changes haven’t thrown anything else off.
👀 Get your most eagle-eyed proof reader to do one final, careful read-through of your print-ready files on paper (to check colours, which behave differently on screen) before they’re sent off. Mark up your corrections with a red pen so you don’t miss any notes in your feedback.
☕️ Take a break before that final proof – especially if you’ve been working on the menus for a while.
⬅️ Read the most important bits of copy (your headers, dish titles and anything else that’s in a bold or larger font) backwards. This helps you spot typos by stopping your brain from filling in letters that aren’t there when it recognises a word.
🥳 Send the menus off to the printer’s and celebrate that you don’t have to do this again for a while.
That said, it’s never too early in the cycle to start thinking about what you want from your next menu change. If your menu is still just a list of your food that fits on the page, it’s time to stop winging it and inject some research and science-backed strategy into your most important sales document.
Find out if your current menu is working hard enough by answering these two questions:
- Does your menu lead customers towards your ideal meal experience?
- Are you aiming to nudge up SPH?
Our new digital course, Menu Engineering with 2Forks, breaks down the entire 360 Menu Optimisation process we used to create killer menus for the likes of Pizza Pilgrims, Dishoom, Wahaca, Rosa’s Thai, Caravan, Tonkotsu and The Real Greek into 10 easy steps, so you can apply 2Forks’ scientific, sales-boosting strategies to your own menu.
Your customers, your restaurant teams and your FD will thank you!
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