HAT302 Food & Beverage Management - Menu Review & Redesign

This report provides a comprehensive review of the menu at Mappen Noodle Restaurant, a Japanese eatery located in Sydney's Central Business District. The current menu is assessed in terms of its concept, item classification, variety, nutritional value, and overall design. The review identifies issues such as a haphazard arrangement of dishes, lack of clear categorization, and an unattractive design. An alternative menu concept is proposed, featuring a double-column text format with categorized sections, smaller text, and a focus on visual appeal and informative content. The proposed redesign aims to improve the customer experience by providing a well-managed, categorized, and informative menu brochure, including essential restaurant information on the cover page. The report concludes with a blueprint of the redesigned menu and a list of references to support the analysis and proposed changes.

Running Head: FOOD AND BEVERAGE MANAGEMENT
Food and Beverage Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Brief Overview
For the overall review of menu concept, the chosen food and beverage outlet is Mappen
Noodle Restaurant that is located in Central Business District, Sydney. This particular restaurant
specializes in Japanese dishes and beverages and is especially popular among people for its wide
variety of noodles and rice bowls at a very reasonable price (Filimonau et al. 2017). However,
the menu card provided by the restaurant was not very attractive and also a very old one that has
not been changed or redesigned for a long time. The basic concept of the menu is to show the
customers the name, price and sample photo of a dish at the same place so that he can understand
about the dish he is going to order (Magnini and Kim 2016). Although the menu card is
informative, it is a bit haphazard and less attractive in the design and moreover, the shabby look
of the card will discourage the customers to buy any food. The main step that can be taken is to
redesign the menu card in such a way that all the dishes are arranged in separate categories along
with an attractive overall design and better quality photos of the dishes.
Menu Review
In the menu provided by the restaurant, it has been found that there are several types of
food and beverages available like Tonkotsu Soup, Kake Soup, Bukkake Noodles, Rice Bowl,
Sushi and some varieties of tea. However, these dishes are not systematically arranged and not
categorized under separate headings (Leib et al. 2017). As a result, a new customer may find it
difficult to understand the actual information presented by the menu regarding the food dishes
and the beverages.

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Figure 1: A Page from the Restaurant Menu
(Source: Mappen Noodle Restaurant)
Each page in the menu contains information boxes of three or four dishes depending on
the size of the pictures and text in each box. There is a lack of proper classification of dishes
although certain headers like Tonkotsu Soup, Kake Soup, Rice Bowls and others are used at
certain pages (Baiomy, Jones and Goode 2017). There is a significant amount of variety among
the various dishes presented by the restaurant. For instance, under the section of Tonkotsu soup,

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there are at least eight varieties of the dish are presented. In total, there are five varieties of
categories, each of which has four to eight different varieties of dishes. In addition, there are six
different varieties of tea and two other popular Japanese beverages.
The calorific values for most of the noodle dishes like Tonkotsu and Kake have high
calorific values as well as significant content of sodium and potassium. Due to high calorific
values, the dishes should not be consumed in excess amount by the customers (Long et al. 2015).
Other dishes like rice bowls and sushi have high amounts of carbohydrate and protein that have
good supplementary values.
The alternate menu design is a double column text format with smaller texts that the
current and addition of separate food categories in the form of table headers. Under each
category, the varieties of the dish will be printed. However, under one particular header, there
can be a maximum of four varieties of dishes printed (Ozdemir and Caliskan 2015). In addition
to the name of the dishes, the prices will be printed on the right and the dish contents will be
printed below in smaller but clearly visible font. The entire menu can consume four or five pages
but should look attractive, well managed, categorized and informative (Krivcova and Filimonau
2017). In addition to the menu part, the entire menu brochure should include a cover title page
where the restaurant information should be given. This information should include contact
number, address, payment information (including cards accepted), company logo, service time
and others.
An alternative menu design is provided in the following screenshot as well as in the
attached document.

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Figure 2: Alternative Menu Concept
(Source: Created by Author)

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References
Baiomy, A.E., Jones, E. and Goode, M.M., 2017. The influence of menu design, menu item
descriptions and menu variety on customer satisfaction. A case study of Egypt. Tourism and
Hospitality Research, p.1467358417708228.
Chang, M.H. and Hou, H.I., 2015. Effects of Prior Exposure on Restaurant Menu Product
Choice. Journal of foodservice business research, 18(1), pp.58-72.
Filimonau, V., Lemmer, C., Marshall, D. and Bejjani, G., 2017. ‘Nudging’as an architect of more
responsible consumer choice in food service provision: The role of restaurant menu design.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 144, pp.161-170.
Hou, Y., Sun, Y., Wan, L.C. and Yang, W., 2015. How can psychological contagion effect be
attenuated? The role of boundary effect on menu design. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism
Research, p.1096348015619410.
Jimenez-Chavez, R., Connors, P. and Josiam, B., 2016. The influence of organic labeling and
price on restaurant menu choice. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 48(7), p.S105.
Krivcova, M. and Filimonau, V., 2017. Restaurant menu design and more responsible consumer
food choice: An exploratory study of managerial perceptions. Journal of cleaner production,
143, pp.516-527.
Leib, T., Reynolds, D., Taylor, J. and Baker, W., 2017. Web-Based Menu Design: A Conjoint
Value Analysis. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, pp.1-13.

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Long, M.W., Tobias, D.K., Cradock, A.L., Batchelder, H. and Gortmaker, S.L., 2015. Systematic
review and meta-analysis of the impact of restaurant menu calorie labeling. American journal of
public health, 105(5), pp.e11-e24.
Magnini, V.P. and Kim, S., 2016. The influences of restaurant menu font style, background
color, and physical weight on consumers’ perceptions. International Journal of Hospitality
Management, 53, pp.42-48.
Ozdemir, B. and Caliskan, O., 2015. Menu design: A review of literature. Journal of
Foodservice Business Research, 18(3), pp.189-206.
VanEpps, E.M., Roberto, C.A., Park, S., Economos, C.D. and Bleich, S.N., 2016. Restaurant
menu labeling policy: review of evidence and controversies. Current obesity reports, 5(1), pp.72-
80.
Wansink, B. and Love, K., 2014. Slim by design: Menu strategies for promoting high-margin,
healthy foods. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 42, pp.137-143.