The 1-2-3s of Menu Boards and Messaging

A restaurant’s menu board should be as easy to digest as its food.

With a few design steps, a restaurant operator can make ordering comfortable for customers and profitable for business.

The key to an effective menu board is ease of use. To achieve that goal, Howland Blackiston, principal of King-Casey, a Westport, Conn. design and branding company with expertise in QSRs, recommends a strategy of “staged messaging.”

Staged messaging

Blackiston encourages owners to put on a consumer’s hat and walk in the restaurant as a customer. “Chances are, you’ll find yourself bombarded with information, but not in a structured way to make a decision.”

Instead, he advises, the restaurant should be divided into zones. Menu messaging should begin at the entry point to help customers make a choice before arriving at the spot where they will place their orders.

For example, to push the sale of a high-profit item, such as a bundled  meal featuring an entrée, drink and side,  a single visual and suggestion like “Today, make it a combo,” could be put at the entrance.

Where customers line up to order, that strategy would continue with a few combos and their prices visually displayed. At the order point, those same top combos along with the rest of the menu would be posted.

“When merchandising is done by zone, customers can make a better decision. The order point is the payoff, the big kahuna….Everything should tie together and have the same family of graphics,” Blackiston notes.

In addition to clutter, a common mistake is misplacement of messaging. For example, promotions about food items are “pointless and inappropriate,” Blackiston says, if they’re located in the beverage “zone” where consumers go to fill cups they’ve been given after ordering. Instead, signage about next visit opportunities such as upcoming specials, events or catering would work better.

“The opportunity is to clean up clutter and develop communication zone-relevant messaging,” he says.

Menu board features

“A picture speaks a thousand words,’’ says Ann Marie Solomon, vice president of merchandising strategy and creative services at ARAMARK, a Philadelphia-based professional services firm with expertise in marketing, design and promotions.

“Boards should  drive what you want consumers to buy, and make you money.’’

Ann Marie Solomon, ARAMARK

Using numbered images rather than text gets around language barriers for non-English speaking customers and makes the ordering process simpler.

“Boards should drive what you want consumers to buy, and make you money,” Solomon says. She recommends use of a sans serif font that is large enough to read (usually at least one-inch high) with items organized left to right by how people order sequentially (protein, side, beverage, dessert).

Blackiston describes the menu board’s center as its “hot spot or bull’s eye.” This area should feature the most popular, highest profit-making menu items, adding that menu boards should never give equal weight to every item, but instead be based on sales.

“Do an analysis examining what is contributing to sales and how much,” he urges.  “Think of each panel as valuable, visual real estate….Dedicate less space to less important items. If you run out of room, remove any item that is contributing less than 1 percent of sales. It won’t make a difference and is just stealing critical space.”

And a menu board should be regarded as a restaurant’s top communication element, not a décor enhancer, Blackiston says. “Keep it as a communication device. It may not be as pretty, but if it is easy to read, clear and logical…then it is a good message board.”

What about Mom and Pop restaurants?

Whether your restaurant is a QSR with thousands of locations or a small-town coffee shop, the menu board rules remain the same. “The lessons apply for both big folks and little folks,” says Blackiston.

Chalk Art Design in Freeport, Maine specializes in distinctive, handcrafted, smudge-free chalk menus, signs and designs suitable for cafes, coffee shops and restaurants. Artist Brendon Pringle, trained as a signwriting master tradesman in New Zealand, has created thousands of menu boards for clients worldwide over the past 20 years.

“Readability is most important,” Pringle says. “It’s a combination of graphics, colors, spacing and layout so a customer’s eye goes where it needs to go.”

Pringle meets with clients to gain a sense of their coffee house or restaurant’s identity and tailor the sign’s look accordingly. Both attractiveness and functionality matter, he says. “It looks like it is handmade but inspiring…and is not just chalk on a black board.”

As with large chains, independent restaurant owners commonly make the mistake of trying to cram too much information into a small space. “If there is too much on the board, the customer gets confused and ends up having to ask the server because they can’t find what they need to,” Pringle says.

Another factor is that Chalk Art Design’s customers can easily change their own prices  without dealing with messy stick-on letters or other bits and pieces. “They just wipe off the chalk price with a damp cloth and change what they need to,” says Pringle.

For smaller establishments, Solomon recommends log ons or menu board fixtures that allow owners to call out a special of the day or most profitable item in 3D off the board. She advises operators to stay away from purchasing letters that come individually.

“It gives a bad impression if you use a 7 as an L. Attention to detail is important. If your sign is messy and unkempt, customers will think that you are not paying attention and that your restaurant is the same way.”

Adds Blackiston, “Mom and Pops can do a sales-to-space analysis, too, and devote the right space to certain items. Subtle changes can help menus. This is surgery. Go with a scalpel and not a meat axe. No one should ever have to start from scratch.”