Secret tricks of restaurant menus: Why you may be enticed to spend more

Since you're providing a paid-for service, yours is not to tell people what to do with their designs or their business, your place is to do your job or find different work that fits your moral bent.

@poot. Thanks for the constructive criticism. As a designer, I do tell clients what to do and how to run their business. That's why I'm a professional and hired as such. I have done menu designs based on the premise I outlined above, so I don't need to find other work, because I already to do it.

In addition, it appears you have little knowledge of the design industry. We don't design for clients, we design for their audience. Design Lesson 101 is complete. ; )

I hate to break the news to you but companies are in business to make money for the owners and stock holders. I have one question for you do you have a retirement fund or stocks or CD's because if you answered yes to any of those I can assure you they have vested interests in food companies and restuarants.

How long have you been or will be un-employed. This is the business world-if people were too busy partying in school and they have no reading comprehension they deserve what befalls them. You can afford to go out to eat thats the bottom line or you can't! It a lot cheaper to make that crap they call pizza at home-at least you won't feel bad throwing it out!! If you notice on the menu Bacon is a 1.50 extra. On the BBQ Chicken Pizza there is only a 50cents increase in price from the BBQ plain-so what is the author griping about?

I think you are impressed with title. If you were to approach Me and tell my marketing department not to do what we paid researchers for a viable ad campaign, I would show you the door and ask you not let it hit you in the back on the way out. You do what you get paid to do, if you want independence, go buy some spray paint and graffiti subway cars.You are an amateur with no business saavy!!

Really?

Nothing personal, but this menu is a disaster. Firstly, you have to make it easy for your guest to find what they like.
And pictures are imperitive. There's a lot more wrong with it, but I don't have time here...Alfred-

Chris, It's called......"marketing."

And it has been done for hundreds, if not thousands of years...next time you read a magazine, newspaper or even watch TV, you are exposed to it....

DUH

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Horse pucky. Menus are meant to be enticing. That is not cynical manipulation. The analysis has several flaws. For instance Roma tomatoes and applewood bacon are not just tomatoes and bacon -- there are significant differences here.

It is conceivable that the author is right about thin crust pizzas. Realistically, however, CPK would be crazy to have a higher price for a less costly item that is so similar to the other option. My guess is that there is some other difference we have not picked up.

I am "just" a consumer not a design expert. The solution to any concern, however, is to read the menu. Simple -- READ THE MENU.

@dave Thanks for the constructive criticism. Again, here we have another person who has not clue what an Art Director does or how we as designers can benefit your business. Sounds like you need charts, graphs, focus groups and tons of data to make your decisions. That information is not your customer and not your audience. They are simply numbers.

It's called marketing and promotion. It is all around us everywhere we go, but we chose what we perceive and what we order off of menus. If you don't have enough restraint to not order "more" or order something that you wouldn't normally get because of the way the menu is designed, you aren't adult enough to be eating out anyway.

Chris,

As a marketing consultant who works with graphic designers I can tell you that our (collective) job is to sell our client's product, not to create wonderful prose or art. Not that yours isn't a noble quest, but that's why we are hired. And if we fail to sell it, they hire someone else who CAN sell the next time. After all, we work in the field of advertising and marketing, not in fine art.

If you want to create art, more power to you. I just suggest you create it under your own name and not under the name of your clients.

You must not live in the USA

That is unfortunately why marketing professionals and corporate america thinks designers are self-centered and egotistical.

As an ad agency owner and graphic designer, the key to success for both designer and customer is collaboration. A company's decision to market a product, to dictate the position of product on a menu, is foremost their decision. If their marketing research and knowledge of their own industry lends itself to positioning their best product center on a page, so be it. It is then my responsibility to make that look good.

If on the other hand the client does not have internal marketing to refer to, then it is my job to research industry trends, and come up with a design that not only looks nice but features their product in a way that will help them drive sales. Yes, you can give your opinion, but you need to be able to back your ideas up with something other than "that will screw up my design".

Marketing drives sales. If the client has no sales, you have no client. See how this cycle works? This isn't about you. Your job is to put forward the best looking design, while engaging in the marketing principles set forth. While it is up to us to raise a red flag when a customer does something stupid, it is NOT up to us to shut down their marketing plans.

Advertising is what it is. It is a manipulation, it's smoke and mirrors... it's never straight forward. Everyone's product is better than everyone else's. If you have an ethical problem with this, you need to think about a career change.

@JPE @tigerlilly125 I understand firsthand what it means to be involved in marketing and design, so I understand why you must think that designers live on an island. There is the assumption that we do things for art's sake or design's sake. I'm not one of those people.

I have been involved in the design, marketing and advertising fields for 15 years. I have designed menus and comprehensive packages for high-end hotels in New York, San Francisco and other major cities. I have created marketing proposals, analyzed customer trends, crunched statistics and the like.

I also worked for studios where 2 designers could do the job of a large marketing team. How is that? Because we cut through the analysis, surveys and bureaucracy and get to the heart of the problem by listening and understanding the client's actual needs.

As designers we do have to make concessions because that is the nature of the business. But a priority must be given to communicating to our client's "audience" and not the client's "wants."

By communicating the message in a clear and concise manner, brand integrity is maintained and the audience is able to act on the message because it is trusted.

When "smoke and mirrors" are used, then that can cloud communication. Moving prices around on a menu to manipulate consumer behavior does not make for a better experience. It's a clever trick that can achieve results in the short term, but degrades over time.

At then end of the day, these tricks can result in turning the client into a car salesman and not a restaurant. I want my clients to hold to their business ideals and not statistical mumbo jumbo.

Actually, I disagree. All stores try to make their wares stand out. Why would you want to buy something that was not attractive? Cars are not designed as much for practicality as for appeal. Houses, packaging, clothes..... You likely wouldn't go back to a merchant that wasn't appealing. The consumer should be aware of what happens and smart enough to get what he, or she, wants, not what is promoted.

I think this latest article below from Walletpop about the Domino's experience and VP Brandon Solano's observations confirms my point precisely.

Focus on the big picture and the quality of your product or consumers will leave. Designers like to reinforce that message without the use of chicanery. Marketing tricks are all well and good in the short term, but have a tendency to distract us from the core values of a company in the long term. Put quality in front of a customer, not gimmicks and tricks.

Test-driving Domino's new pie -- and savoring the reasons why
http://bit.ly/8fCS4h

"Not long into the job, Solano realized his friend was right."It was all about 30-minute delivery and not about the product," he says. Even more pressing: since 2006, Domino's business had declined for three straight years. Revamping the recipe was going to cost the company a lot of money, Solano knew. But: "The cost of not having a fantastic pizza? Consumers leave you."