Restaurant Menu Product Positioning: Being in the Right Place with the Right Items

Two of the most misunderstood parts of #restaurant menu engineering are product positioning and price positioning, and if you get these two things right, you will be well on your way to a healthy, profitable restaurant. Let’s start with product positioning.

There are a number of product-positioning diagrams floating around, and there are also a number of menu-engineering resources claiming to have the single answer to every menu. When in reality, each menu needs to be adjusted based on the products and product sections’ ability to make you famous and make you money. So keep in mind, where a person’s eye falls first is not always the best location for the items you want to sell most. It may be in a place where your eye tends to linger, rather than just where it lands.

What is always true on a restaurant menu, however, is that your guests are looking for the items you recommend in your restaurant.

They want to know what you think. So when I see menus that don’t have highlights, with items just listed in rows, one item after another, I see a missed opportunity to help restaurant patrons make a decision about what they will choose to eat. It’s like having a guest ask you what you would recommend and you telling them, “I don’t know, whatever you’d like, it’s all the same.” This seems especially true in more upscale restaurants with their minimalist menus.

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