Menu Concept and Redesign for Sails Restaurant

The Sails Restaurant offers a minimalistic menu with a focus on seafood and meat dishes. The menu is divided into bread and appetizers, entrees, mains, side orders and salads, sandwich, and dessert. The proposed redesign aims to make the menu more artistically pleasing and set the concept clearly. The dessert section is small, and the dishes are not always named but highlighted for their key ingredients. The redesign includes a more detailed description of the dishes and a clear division of the menu.

Provide a brief review of the selected food and beverage outlet and identify its
current menu concept
The Sails Restaurant is located near the Noosa beach and shares a picturesque view of
the sea line. The location and the setting are an important part of the aesthetic of the
restaurant. Fittingly the restaurant menu comprises mainly of sea fish, duck and an
assortment of bread and cheese. Most customers of the restaurant are tourists who
have come to visit the Noosa beach (Sails Noosa, 2019). As a result, the restaurant
tries its best to make their experience a memorable one. They also attract many local
guests who drop by for a meal. Therefore, the Sails restaurant have to provide a menu
that is memorable and very authentic for the tourists while it also has to keep the local
clientele interested. The restaurant provides the best of both world by combining the
choicest seaside snacks like fish and chips as well as more sophisticated dishes. The
seafood ingredients are a representation of the local cuisine and also procured for the
nearby waters.
The list of wines and alcoholic beverages are boast-worthy. Most people prefer white
wine or champagne as it is most suitable for the weather and scene outside the
restaurant. The flavours of the dish are kept mostly muted only for a sudden sourness
from the lemon, chili and fresh herbs. The flavours are mostly Asian and go well with the
seafood entree. The bread and cheese provide more basic flavours to balance the
tartness and saltiness in seafood.
Identify and evaluate the number of items, menu classifications, the variety of
items, and item’s nutritional value
The menu of the restaurant is very plain and minimalistic. The menu is divided into the
bread and appetizers, entrees, mains, side orders and salads, sandwich and dessert.
There is also a children’s menu which comprises fast food and snacks that may lack
variety and is not unique. But the menu will definitely satisfy the needs of the kids. The
drinks menu is separate and not provided unless asked for. The menu items have been
provided with a title and then the ingredients have been described briefly. It makes the
dishes clear to understand and the guests can make it clear if they object to any of the
ingredients. The appetizers consist of one bread dish, caviar, dumplings, charred trout,
buffalo haloumi and duck skin dumplings. It is an interesting mix of seaside snacks and
elegantly put together dishes (Cruz Moreira et al. 2018). The entrees are filled with
seafood like oysters, kingfish trout, tuna, salmon, prawns and crab. The guests can
choose where their seafood is sourced from between two options. For meat lovers,
there is buffalo ricotta and beef ribs. The price of seafood and meat dishes are
comparable and fairly priced. The main course is similarly planned like the starters.
First, the seafood dishes are listed beginning with prawns, barramundi, and shellfish. In
the main course section, the guests are able to choose 1 vegetarian dish, that is the
cauliflower steak. In the meat section, there is a duck, steak and lamb. The choice of
meat and seafood sets the restaurant more on the finer and elitist side.

Identify the potential issues in the menu design and propose an alternative menu
concept. Justify the reason behind your proposed redesign
The menu as stated earlier is quite plain and bland. The style and theme of the
restaurant are not clear from the menu in itself. However, due to the simplistic and airy
concept of the restaurant as well as the atmosphere, the menu does not seem too
unfitting. The division in the menu is also very basic and not at all unique. However, it is
clear that the management had tried to account for the taste of a variety of people
including children who are more interested in snacks rather than in exotic seafood. This
enables them to capture the attention of both the tourists as well as of the local people
in general (Linassi et al. 2016). There is a menu section under the title Sandwich which
has only one dish available under it and that too during lunch meals only. This dish can
be transferred under the main course or in the appetizers as it would be more fitting.
Redesign the menu based on the identified issues and proposed menu concept.
The dessert section is rather small. However, given that the restaurant is more focused
on seafood and meats, it can be overlooked. There are two types of pudding, pavlova,
tart and mille feuille. The children get vanilla ice cream with a choice among chocolate,
caramel or strawberry toppings.
The menu should have been more artistically pleasing and should clearly set the
concept clearly (Hashimoto et al. 2016). The dishes in the menu are not always named
but just highlighted for their key ingredients. For example, the cauliflower steak in the
main course is just titled as cauliflower.
Dish/ item Calorific content
Potato bread 560cal
smoked trout 162cal
Toasted tuna 111cal
Buffalo Haloumi 90cal
Caviar with thin toast 84cal
Sautéed Prawns 197cal
Fish and chips 110cal
Barramundi 300cal
Grilled cauliflower 50cal
Include an image of the original and redesigned menus at the end of your
submission

Original design

New design

References
Cruz Moreira, R.P., Wanner, E., Martins, F.V. and Sarubbi, J.F., 2018. An Evolutionary
Mono-Objective Approach for Solving the Menu Planning Problem.
Hashimoto, A., Harashima, J., Yamakata, Y. and Mori, S., 2016, July. Design in
Everyday Cooking: Challenges for Assisting with Menu Planning and Food Preparation.
In International Conference on Cross-Cultural Design (pp. 182-192). Springer, Cham.
Linassi, R., Alberton, A. and Marinho, S.V., 2016. Menu engineering and activity-based
costing: an improved method of menu planning. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 28(7), pp.1417-1440.
Sails Noosa, (2019), About, Accessed from https://www.sailsnoosa.com.au/