How Studying Restaurant Menus Can Make You a Better Copywriter. Proof!

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I Never thought you could learn much about copywriting by studying high end restaurant menus, but I guess you can.

Cornell University recently did a study of high-end restaurant menus. They decoded them and made some interesting discoveries.

They found even the smallest of details like how a word is placed, used, or even highlighted made up to a 28 percent difference in sales.

In fact, the article gave many similarities between customers menu choices that pull high end dishes ... to a sales letter that pulls sales.

Interesting reading for any copywriting student.

Here's The Link To Research Study
#copywriting #copywriter #make #menus #restaurant #studying
  • This is an excellent case study for anyone interested in the psychological (and perhaps sociological) components of copywriting.

    I value technique and precision, but ultimately I write 'em as I see 'em.

    Great find Niche Man.
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    • This is actually something I did as a past business venture... It started whilst at my part-time job back, when I was 17/18. I would generally work as the Restaurant Manager on the weekends.

      Every Sunday (in the winter) we would sell a Roast Dinner which as priced a bit higher than the other dishes... (£8.50, rather than £7)... so I thought I would see how I could boost sales.

      (I had read "I is for Influence" by Rob Yeung a few weeks prior... so this probably sparked my interest.)

      My main trick was to create little stands (folded thick paper, picture a V upside down) to go on each table telling what meat the roast was that day. On this same stand, I made a bit of text stand out saying "Customer's favourite dish" or something similar.

      This form of social proof had the biggest effect.

      On top of this I:
      • Would use scarcity... "They're selling quick," "only 10 left," we only ever had a limited amount of them, for reasons I'll explain later.
      • Would try to create a situation where the customers would act consistently in their decisions. Linking their 'traditional' family to our 'classic' roast dinner.
      • Would pre-sell them with a sign as soon as they entered (it was a restaurant within a paid-entry park) with a big ol' sign and hopefully a mention from the admission team.

      There's probably a few more... but this was a couple of years ago now.

      I can't remember the exact results... but they were good enough to motivate me to launch a business off the back of it... I think on some days we doubled sales from the control and regularly sold out.

      What effect did this have for the restaurant?

      It essentially meant more profit for 2 reasons...

      1. Selling more roast, duh?

      2. Cutting down on waste.

      The catering manager always limited the amount of roasts we could sell (it was better to sell out, than be left with a ton of food) because hard roast potatoes and old veggies can't be resold. They went to the pigs.

      Chris
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  • They also use menu placement as a way to sell items with a higher profit margin. Just like with a webpage, etc., placement on the menu really has an affect on buyers decisions.

    Learned a bunch of this years ago in another life going through culinary school. Shoulda paid more attention
  • a food scientist discovered this? marketing people have been doing this stuff for years. I think it goes to saying the more descriptive the menu is for a dish the more you can charge for it. if I see red beans and rice, I probably wouldn't order it, but if it was Cajun red beans and rice then I know more about it since it is Cajun it is prepared a certain way than if it was just red beans and rice I would think it is just a plain one.
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    • True. But you know as well as I do that scientific study always has to play catch up
      to marketplace realities. I'm still seeing "New" scientific studies of what attracts women to men and men to women.
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