Menu Planning for Restaurant Success

This assignment delves into the critical role of menu planning in the restaurant industry. It emphasizes the significance of menu planning methods and product development processes in today's dynamic market. The report highlights how consumer preferences, occasions, and evolving trends influence menu design. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of ambience, including locality and décor, as a key factor in menu planning effectiveness.

Menu Planning

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................1
1.1 Principles of recipe development.....................................................................................1
1.2 Factors that influence service methods.............................................................................2
1.3 Factors influencing menu planning decisions..................................................................3
1.4 Discussing the stages of the planning of menu product development..............................4
1.5 Evaluating the influences on the development process....................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Planing of menu is the method or process to set and plan the best out of many possible
presentation of different recipes and serving methods made for customers in order to meet the
needs and preferences in the effective manner. Meal planner can be undoubtedly used as a
strength by the restaurant against its rivals make gains. By the way of making small research,
planning the food before can easily assist in the time saving and making wealth through the way
of dine in or lunching. Meal planning and product development are the beneficial ways to further
nourish the stability diet (Dixon and Sharp, 2014).
1.1 Principles of recipe development
Just imagine how recipe different recipe come to the market who make them, it the recipe
developer who is assigned this task of recipe development. It is always advised to produce and
consume food which is fit and healthy, and it depends on which restaurant is serving us the food.
It takes number of trials to make the perfect recipe for the customers.
 Cooking overture: To make a perfect recipe many experiments are required to be
performed to get the perfect recipe (Baraban and Durocher, 2010). A series of steps are
required to be followed to get the finest taste. Some food items require time to get
cooked so they are kept at a temperature below boiling point, some require less time to
cook so they are kept on grilling or broiling. Always try to maintain the consistency in
quality of what is to be prepared.
 Ascertaining Aliment: Aliment simply means the materials that nourishes one's body.
They are the nutrients that should be looked into like the fat, iron, carbohydrates,
calcium and vitamins. Since the food is prepared for all types of people, expectations of
everybody should be meet. Healthy food means healthy society. A nutritionally balanced
food should be produced.
 Taste and preference: To maintain a consistent position in the market, the taste should
be kept same. If you will keep on changing the taste the customer will lose their interest
in your food and may switch to new restaurants (Chou and Fang, 2013). Since every
customer has a different taste and preference for restaurant, so they choose accordingly,
where they will get the food they prefer but any change will have impact thereon.
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 Foundation: Whenever you are preparing to introduce something new or trying to make
changes in your product, then a market test is to be done to see if the people liking your
product or not. What feedback are we getting of our product. Any change made should
be best for the future. The pre-budget should be prepared and who will be our target
customers should be kept in mind.
 Preparation techniques and tips: The food cooked should be healthy and hygienic for
the consumers and must meet the needs and requirements. Creativity is a must. The food
should be properly garnished.For the preparation technique, there should be an idea of
how you are going to present you food and how the plating will be done, to look
attractive.
1.2 Factors that influence service methods
After the menu planning comes, planning the service planning, as to how you will treat
your customer and how you will react to your customers (Din, Zahari and Shariff, 2017). The
service should be in appropriate manner so that no customer should face any difficulty and are
fully satisfied with the services.
 Basic factors
These are the unexpected factors which are necessary for fulfilling the requirement of any
service. And of these factors are not fulfilled they might cause dissatisfaction. Like for example
if rent a room in a hotel we would expect that the room will be clean. It will not be like we will
enter the room and then ask for cleaning (Sinclair, Cooper and Mansfield, 2014). Focus on the
things that create satisfaction rather than focusing and investing on the needless things which
does not satisfy the customers. Like if the people does not like the restaurant of your hotel and
they prefer to have food outside then stop investing your money on restaurant and try improving
other services.
-Hygiene factors
The atmosphere of the restaurant should be clean and hygiene so that health of customers is not
directly impacted. More and more customers get attracted if the surrounding are clean and
attractive.
-Service factors
The staff should be well trained to solve the customer requirement. They should respond
to customers as quickly as possible and should try to solve their issues as quickly as possible.
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The service staff team should be have skills and talents to fulfil the utility of the customers. The
customer should always be asked to give feedback of the services. They may be asked to rate the
services of the company through social media or may do mouth publicity.
 Performance factors
These factors will lead to satisfaction if satisfied fully but may lead to dissatisfaction if they are
not fulfilled. Basically, customer needs are to be fulfilled like the customer wants of a AC room,
free Wi-Fi service, lift facility and non smoking room.
 Excitement factors
These include the surprising factors which are unexpected and are surprise for customers. They
bring smile and pleasure on the faces of the customers (Thomas, 2016). To survive in these
competitive world, excitement factors are a must which will make you stand out from others.
These factors have a soothing and happiness effect on the face of the customers like welcoming
your customers with fresh flowers, offering them a welcome drink, a gesture with a garland,
offering chocolates to children all free of cost.
1.3 Factors influencing menu planning decisions
 Before planning a menu keep in mind who you are going to serve because there are
different age groups of people have different taste and preferences. Since they are not of
similar age group they have different food requirements like an adult requirement will be
more rather than that of teenager. Everyone's diet differ from people to people with the
factors of age, gender, health, lifestyles, occupations, habits, etc.
 The factor to be considered is that the food prepared should be appealing and attractive. It
should be creative and properly garnished (Chou and Fang, 2013). Food can be made
attractive and tasty by using different methods of garnishing, using food items, adding
different flavours, shapes, colours and textures. Using a good range of highly nutritious
food can make it appealing.
 A proper time management should be done. If a dish takes too long to get prepared, then
the time should be set accordingly. The customers should not be kept on hold for too long
while the food is getting prepared. So before preparation time factor should be
considered.
 Next important factor that has to be considered while planning a menu is budget. A
proper budget should be set in mind so that the business works on a profit basis. Only a
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profitable business can survive in the market so the prices should be set accordingly (Din,
Zahari, and Shariff, 2017).
 Planning of menu should be done according to season. Include only those items which
are available in that particular season because if otherwise used then it may affect the
health of many. So priority to seasonal food should be given.
 Menu planning decisions depends on so many factors and the choice of the customers as
some of them are vegetarians some are allergic, some are diabetic, some are non
vegetarian and others are non allergic and some like only particular ingredients in their
food, so dishes are to be prepared as per the wants and needs of the customers.
 Only those dishes are to be prepared in which the cook is expert. He should not keep on
experimenting on new dishes as customers mat get offended with the taste and may
switch to other competitors.
 The menu list should be prescribed and short according to the size of your kitchen where
the food is going to be prepared.
 The prices should be kept consumer friendly as not everyone can afford high charged
food.
1.4 Discussing the stages of the planning of menu product development
In the hospitality industry, restaurants always have the idea to innovate something new
which is related to the food service concept. For survival of any restaurant in the market it is the
essential strategy to be followed and it even helps in making large profits. Manager of Prezzo
Italian Restaurant believes in making innovations in their products in order to attract more and
more consumers towards it, therefore for attracting new customers they have developed a new
product. The restaurant runs on the idea to bring the touch of Italy to UK. Therefore, in order to
compete with its rivals the restaurant always brings something new every time for its customers.
Following are the stages followed by the entity for development of any new product (Gordon and
Brezinski, 2016).
In the menu planning for a new product for Prezzo, firstly an idea of a new product is to
be developed on making the consideration of customers and management team. Then comes on
making a rough archetype by the restaurant, which is to be developed in order to create a
prototype in the form of commercialized bench sample. After that, it has to be redefined by
collecting the feedback from the entire team. Furthermore, a prototype for test is rolled out after
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the determination of customers feedback. At the completion of these stages, an operation test is
conducted in order to help marketing to advertise the product and attract the customers towards
it. Still, the product is redefined in market after getting the support of effectiveness of marketing
and approaching the feedbacks of customers. In this particular way the new product can be
developed and established successfully by Prezzo Italian Restaurant.
By applying these steps for product development, it will be easy for the restaurant to
provide quick services to its customers and it is largely used in hospitality industry to gain high
amount of profits. Italian meals is a new concept in the food industry of UK. It is one of the best
way adopted by Prezzo of developing a new product or food recipe for making quick attraction
of its buyers (Kim and Park, 2015.). There is a vast variety of food products with various
combination which gives the varied options to a customer so that from that option a customer can
make a appropriate choice at an affordable price. On providing fresh food, firm can easily grow
and establish itself in the market.
1.5 Evaluating the influences on the development process
In the present scenario of UK, there is a vast range of influences of different internal as
well as external factors on the development process of establishment of any new product. For
Prezzo, Cost of raw material and resources including human resources have a great influence on
the development of a new product. Moreover, it is very important for the firm to consider the
changes in technology, politics and natural environmental factors at the time of development of
any product. In UK, the needs and demands of consumers are varying very rapidly. Prezzo is
also gets affected by these changes and various other social factors including culture, tradition of
individuals etc. in the development of its new product. Adding to it, it is very essential for the
entity to have adequate human resource, funds for various operations, time needed to deliver the
services of food and various other factors. So these are the main factors which influences the
innovation of any new product (Mabogunje, 2015). Furthermore, following are the addition
factors which can influence the development process of the firm:-
 Reviewing the business in context of change in strategies and systems which are in one
way or the other not beneficial for the entity any more.
 Sales volume generated by the business also impacts the development process of Prezzo.
 Decision of prices for various food offered and break-even quantity is highly dependent
on the cost and revenue generated by the firm.
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 For further the evaluation should be done on making the comparison between the
forecasted quantity and quantity sold by the entity.
 Weather conditions- Dishes must be offered on considering the weather conditions by
Prezzo. For example in summers, the entity can introduce a range of flavours of ice-
cream or mock tails and in winters focus should be on the dishes which are tempting for
customers.
 Taste and preferences of the customers- It is one of the important factor that influences
the development of any product a lot. It is the priority factor which should be kept in
mind by restaurant at the time of developing the product. Taste, preferences and needs
of customers of the locality influences the menu planning and development. This factor
can highly influence the attraction of consumers towards the entity and can decrease the
profit margin.
CONCLUSION
The research report tells about the importance of menu planning for any restaurant. It is
considered as a backbone of hospitality industry where the consumers and occasions have
become highly demanded and when changes coming to people, perfect is demanded all the time.
Equal and greater importance have been given to menu planning methods and product
development process in today's scenario. The report concludes by throwing the light on
importance of ambience that is locality and décor etc. of the restaurant in the hospitality industry
as one of the essential characteristic in menu planning method which defines the effectiveness of
the place.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baraban, R. S. and Durocher, J. F., 2010. Successful restaurant design. John Wiley & Sons.
Chou, S. F. and Fang, C. Y., 2013. Exploring surplus-based menu analysis in Chinese-style fast
food restaurants. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 33. pp.263-272.
Din, N., Zahari, M.S.M. and Shariff, S.M., 2017. Nutritional labelling in Malaysian full service
restaurant menu. Journal of ASIAN Behavioural Studies. 2(2). pp.47-55.
Dixon, E., and et.al. 2014. Application of a menu-planning template as a tool for promoting
healthy preadolescent diets. Topics in Clinical Nutrition. 29(1). pp.47-56.
Gordon, R.T. and Brezinski, M.H., 2016. The complete restaurant management guide.
Routledge.
Kim, S., Son, C., Yoon, B. and Park, Y., 2015. Development of an innovation model based on a
service-oriented product service system (PSS). Sustainability. 7(11). pp.14427-14449.
Mabogunje, A., 2015. The development process: A spatial perspective. Routledge.
Sinclair, S.E., Cooper, M. and Mansfield, E.D., 2014. The influence of menu labeling on calories
selected or consumed: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the Academy
of Nutrition and Dietetics. 114(9). pp.1375-1388.
Thomas, E., 2016. Food for thought: obstacles to menu labelling in restaurants and cafeterias.
Public health nutrition. 19(12). pp.2185-2189.
Online:
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