Latest / Restaurant Business with Fexingo: Food Service, Hospitality, and Independent Operators / The Real Cost of Restaurant Menu Design Psychology
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a 12-table Italian restaurant in Chicago called Rosario's that redesigned its menu last year and saw its average ticket go up 18 percent without changing a single price. Luna: Wait, 18 percent just from design? No price hikes at all? Lucas: Zero. They moved the carbonara from the bottom left to the top right, swapped the font from Helvetica to a serif, and added a $145 Wagyu special nobody orders. Luna: And that boosted spend? The Wagyu that nobody buys? Lucas: That's the whole point. The Wagyu anchors the high end. Suddenly the $38 lobster ravioli feels reasonable. Menu psychology is one of the highest roi changes an operator can make, and most restaurants leave money on the table because they treat the menu like a list instead of a profit engine. Luna: Alright, walk me through the science. Where does a customer's eye actually go first? Lucas: Eye-tracking studies from the mid-2010s — Syracuse University did a big one — show that diners scan in an F-shaped pattern, but the first place their eyes land is the top center. The second is the top right. That's the 'golden triangle.' Luna: So the most profitable items go top right, right? Lucas: Exactly. Rosario's put its 38-dollar lobster ravioli there — 65 percent gross margin — and moved the cheap pasta special to the bottom left, which is the 'graveyard.' Orders for the lobster ravioli doubled in six weeks. Luna: What about font and color? Does that really matter? Lucas: Hugely. A 2013 study from Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research found that descriptive menu labels — like 'Grandma's Carrot Cake' instead of 'Carrot Cake' — increased sales by 27 percent. But it's not just words. Serif fonts signal tradition and quality; sans-serif feels modern and casual. Luna: And I've heard that removing the dollar sign makes people spend more. Is that true? Lucas: Yes. A study by the Journal of Consumer Research — I think 2009 — tested exactly that. When a menu listed prices without a dollar sign or even the word 'dollars,' average spend went up about 11 percent. The theory is that the dollar sign triggers a pain point. Without it, the price is just a number, not a loss. Luna: So you want people to process the dish emotionally first, then notice the price second? Lucas: Exactly. And you also want to decouple price from value perception. That's where the decoy item comes in. The Wagyu at Rosario's is a classic decoy — it's priced so high that everything else looks reasonable. But it also makes the restaurant feel like it offers luxury. Luna: But isn't there a risk of cynicism? If a customer figures out you're manipulating them, they might feel tricked. Lucas: That's a real concern. I think the line is crossed when the design is intentionally confusing — like tiny font, no prices, or deliberately hiding low-margin items to trick people into overspending. Rosario's owner told me they're not hiding anything. They're just prioritizing what they're proud of. Luna: I'd push back a little. If you bury the cheap pasta in the bottom left, you're making it harder for a budget-conscious diner to find. That's not exactly neutral. Lucas: Fair. And I think the best operators are transparent about it. Some menus now have a small section at the bottom called 'Value Favorites' to serve both goals. But look — this isn't new. The menu as a marketing tool has been studied since the 1970s. What's changed is data. Luna: Data from where? POS systems? Lucas: Yeah. Modern POS systems can tell you exactly which menu items sell when, combined with where they sit on the page. You can A/B test a menu in a chain across 50 locations. One chain I spoke to — a 30-location casual dining group — tested two designs. The optimized version lifted same-store revenue by 4 percent. Luna: That's huge for zero additional food cost. Lucas: Exactly. And that kind of data-driven approach is spreading fast. But I want to come back to something you said about cynicism... Lucas: Because honestly, if these conversations have moved your thinking forward even a little — maybe you're an operator, maybe you're a consultant — we want to keep them accessible to everyone. We deliberately don't run ads on this show. Not now, not ever. If that independence matters to you, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the lights on and the content free. Appreciate anyone who chips in. Lucas: Anyway — back to the cynicism question. I actually think the bigger risk isn't customer pushback. It's over-engineering. Luna: Meaning what? Too many psychological tricks on one page? Lucas: Right. If you use every trick — price anchoring, golden triangle, decoy, font psychology, descriptive labels, no dollar signs — the menu can feel cluttered. Cognitive load goes up. Diners get overwhelmed and default to the safest choice, which is often the cheapest or most familiar item. That's the opposite of what you want. Luna: So there's a law of diminishing returns. Lucas: Absolutely. The best menus pick two or three principles and execute them cleanly. Rosario's used three: golden triangle, a single decoy, and serif font. That's it. They didn't remove dollar signs or add flowery descriptions. Luna: And the result was plus 18 percent. What about chains? Do you see this at scale? Lucas: Oh yeah. The Cheesecake Factory's menu is famously engineered. It's a book — 250 items. But they use boxes and borders to highlight high-margin items. A box around a dessert can lift orders by 20 percent. And they put the most profitable dishes in the top left of every page. Luna: But twenty-five-sixteen pages? That's a lot. Doesn't that overwhelm customers? Lucas: It would for me. But their model is different — they're selling the experience of choice. And they've been doing it for decades. For most independent operators, less is more. 15 to 20 items is the sweet spot, according to most consultants I've talked to. Luna: Alright, what about digital menus? QR code menus exploded during COVID. Do these psychology principles apply there? Lucas: Great question. Short answer: yes, but differently. Eye-tracking on a phone is different — people scroll top to bottom, so the golden triangle shifts. But the decoy and anchoring principles still work. One study from 2023 showed that putting a high-margin item at the top of a digital menu increased its selection rate by 14 percent compared to the same item in the middle. Luna: But with digital, you can also dynamically change the menu based on time of day or weather, right? Lucas: Exactly. Some chains now show different desserts on cold days versus hot days. That's the frontier. But it raises new questions — like, if you change the menu too often, customers lose their sense of what to expect. There's a balance. Luna: So what's the one actionable takeaway for a small independent operator listening right now? Lucas: Pick one high-margin item you're proud of. Move it to the top right of your menu. Watch what happens for two weeks. If you see a lift, then add a decoy. That's all. You don't need to redesign everything at once. Luna: And if the decoy doesn't sell, that's fine. It's doing its job. Lucas: Exactly. It's like a scarecrow. It doesn't need to attract crows. It needs to make them go somewhere else.