Why Restaurant Menu Descriptions Affect Profit More Than Prices

Restaurant Business with Fexingo: Food Service, Hospitality, and Independent Operators · Jul 4, 2026 · 6m · transcript

Episode 93 of Restaurant Business with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dive into the hidden profit lever of menu language—how the words used to describe a dish can shift customer behavior by as much as 20 percent. They break down a 2026 study from Cornell's Food & Brand Lab that tested verb-driven vs. adjective-driven descriptions across 40 independent restaurants. Results: menus using active verbs like 'seared,' 'drizzled,' and 'hand-chopped' increased order rates for high-margin items by 18 percent compared to adjective-heavy descriptions like…