Designing and coming up with the menu
Every time someone wants to eat something, they select a perfect restaurant, and selecting the perfect restaurant is not known to be an easy task (Harrington, Ottenbacher, & Kendall, 2011). They carefully examine several considerations before choosing the ideal restaurant and that one of the considerations they make concerns the menu offered by the restaurant. That is the reason that the Lorna Cascade menu is considerate of the different clients who will be a part of the customer base. The attached menu is designed to be effective for both the natives of Lorne as well as the many tourists who visit the town of Lorne. Lorne has hundreds of restaurants, and Lorne Cascade will be adding to that number, as such, it has to be different in the way that it operates and offers its menu. A menu is so important because everything begins with a menu, fortunately, or otherwise. The menu dictates how a restaurant will operate, get organized, and managed as well as the extent to which it meets the goals set out (Guéguen & Jacob, 2012). The menu too dictates how the interior of the building looks like and how it is designed. These factors will be discussed in depth in the following sections, where this report will be highlighting the factors that were considered when coming up with the menu.
A look into the menu reveals that the costs of all the dishes that will be served are averagely costed. This is based on the mission statement of the restaurant, which reads, “Providing the community with the best produce our region has to offer; prepared and served with love and commitment to quality.” Further, the vision statement is “to create an ambient space for you and your loved ones for your hunger pangs because you deserve it.” Both the vision and the mission statement are customer-centric, and that is seen in the cost of the foods sold by the restaurant. The target market of this restaurant are the people of Lorne before targeting the tourists who frequent Lorne, and that explains the fair pricing of the menu items. The values of the restaurant are supporting the local economy, community ownership, sustainability, charity, hospitality, integrity, honesty, and authenticity. The pricing is dictated by the first two values of the restaurant, which are supporting the local economy and having the community own the restaurant. That would be impossible if the cost of food was off the roof because not many of the locals would be able to afford dining at the restaurant and feeling a sense of ownership toward the restaurant.
Another consideration made as far as the menu is concerned is the expected guests and clients. Looking at the food servings, one would realize that some are original Australia dishes, but at the same time, others are foreign. The foreigners who will probably need sometime before they acclimatize to Australian food will still be served dishes they are familiar with, and with time they will be in a position to sample authentic Australian foods. Similarly, locals who want to sample foreign dishes too will be able to do so because there is a mix of both local, regional, and international dishes. The reason why a client would choose to dine at a restaurant is dependent on the ability to find the food they wanted to have and not find alternatives (Duarte Alonso, O’Neill, Liu, & O’ shea, 2013). If a client is unable to find that, then it is not a good menu.
Before designing any menu, then competition as a factor must be considered (Ozdemir & Caliskan, 2014). The city of Lorne has many restaurants, and the competition for customers is high, and that means that we had to design a menu that is pocket friendly and a food variety that meets a wide range of customers. If these factors are not considered, then it will be possible for customers to choose a restaurant next block and leave Lorne Cascade when they could have dined at the restaurant. The foods in the menu are offered by competition but at slightly higher charges and fewer accompaniments, and so after checking out that competition, Lorne Cascade decided to offer almost similar foods, at a considerably less cost and more accompaniments. This is done following the rule of the lamb that before designing a menu, understand what restaurants within 10 minutes are offering (Ozdemir & Caliskan, 2014). Such gives one an idea about what they need to offer themselves, either in line with the offerings of the others of completely new offerings. Lorne Cascade chose the former. A consideration of the prices, cuisine, and themes was done, and this menu was arrived at as being the winning menu.
Further from the competition, there was also a need for a menu that is of a manageable size. There is always a temptation to offer a huge selection of items, but the problem is that a huge menu would mean that there is a chance that the food would be tossed every night (Hellier, 2019). While the selection is limited, the idea was that the offering would ensure that clients do not spend so much time scrolling through and end up not ordering anything. Manageability is important so that the customers are not overwhelmed with choices as it has been noted that many choices and options usually stress out and confuse the customers (Linassi, Alberton, & Marinho, 2016).
the menu was decided after considering the size of the kitchen and store and what can be realistically produced. It is always important to consider the capacity of the kitchen (Bowden & Dagger, 2011). In this consideration, we look at the availability of grilled items, soups, baked goods, and sautéed dishes.
Based on the design of the menu, it was decided that the fonts used should be easy to read and that there will not be a lot of text. Customers are known to get overwhelmed by too much text and font that is confusing (Kalenjuk et al., 2016). The design of the menu is simple, and while there is culinary jargon, it is not a lot. The font size is just the right size because a menu should not be so small that the diners squint looking at the items, and also, the items need not be too clumsy to handle (Kalenjuk et al., 2016). That is the reason that why the items are neither printed too large nor too small.
Finally, we attempted the gaze motion theory which avers that diners exhibit a common behavior in which when they are looking at the menus if there is an expensive top-quality entrée at the front and center, they see that and then the gaze moves directly beneath that entrée perhaps to a more affordable food (Yang, 2012). That is what the menu looks like; it begins with perhaps the more expensive food and directly below it is a cheaper food which the consumers will more or less see and get attracted to. Diners are usually not inclined to look at the back of a menu (Magnini & Kim, 2016). That is the reason the menu is a single page, so that, in the event, the clients request to see the offerings, they can view all of them at once. The use of reddish color was so that it could grab the attention of the clients and make them hungry, which is a good thing in hospitality (Magnini & Kim, 2016). These are psychological effects that were designed to attract and make the customers not just stare at the menu but rather make an order.
As can be noted, these are actions that were actively taken in designing and coming up with the menu. The competition in the region, the prospective customers, the ability to produce and store the raw materials and ingredients, as well as mission and vision statement of the restaurant were the key considerations in coming up with the menu as it is. Additionally, an application of the gaze motion theory was also put in use. Hopefully, these factors will help Lorne Cascade Restaurant achieve success both in the short term and the long term and continue to be sustainable as it is in one of the restaurant values.