Menu Planning and Product Development Report: Alperton Fine Dining

This report provides a detailed analysis of menu planning and product development for Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant, located in Central London, UK. It covers key aspects such as menu development, including concept generation, market research, and the creation of a prototype. The report also examines menu planning principles, emphasizing balance, variety, contrast, color, and eye appeal. Different types of menus, including static, A'la Carte, table d'hote, du jour, and cycle menus, are discussed, with a focus on the static menu used by the restaurant. The report addresses menu structure, language, and layout, and explores menu pricing strategies, including markup pricing and special pricing considerations. Finally, it analyzes menu profitability and commodity planning, considering seasonal factors and menu options like coffee shops and bars. The report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the strategic and operational aspects of menu management within a fine-dining context.

Menu Planning and Product
Development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK...............................................................................................................................................1
Menu Development................................................................................................................1
Menu Options.........................................................................................................................5
Menu Pricing..........................................................................................................................5
Menu Analysis and Profitability.............................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Menu Planning refers to the process or methods to plan the best presentation of servings
and recipes made for customers in a well understood and well-defined way that effectively meets
their needs and an occasion of serving. Product development is defined as a process that makes
the entire menu more effective via adding additional features into it (Arboletti and et. al., 2014).
In the present assignment, given organisation is Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant which is
located in Central London, United Kingdom. It serves dishes by using table services usually for
the guests who seek extravagant menu, unique ambience and high quality affordable food. This
report covers various aspects of developing menu including menu planning, types, appearance,
options, seasonal factors, structure and layout. It also discusses about menu pricing, menu
analysis and profitability.
TASK
Menu Development
Menu development refers to the process of developing a list that includes new and
innovative recipes with good balance of ingredients and taste for guests. In today's competitive
environment, the demand of fine dinning is increasing rapidly. This makes it necessary for
restaurants to take actions for improving and upgrading their ambiance, interior design, services
and decoration (Bruun and et. al., 2015). Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant is a UK based
restaurant which is located in Central London. After considering the increasing demand of fine
dining restaurant, an executive chef have been appointed to do some changes in menu and make
it more attractive so that, sales can be increase.
As an executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant, some improvements are made
in firm's menu by adding new and innovative dishes to it. As organic food items and Indian
snakes are not offered by restaurants in London, these are chosen to be added in the menu of
restaurant. Various other options are also provided in menu for guests like different flavours of
coffee and beverages that assists in attracting more number of customers and increasing sales.
The path that needs to be followed by executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant for
developing menu is as follows:
Concept:
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 Generating an overarching idea that directs the offerings of restaurant and define its
niche. Keep updated with the current culinary trends and integrate them into concept (Menu
Development, 2018).
Research:
 Conducting market research for understanding market demographics for ensuring that
menu reflects spending habits and taste of target audience. Keep eye on competition and ascertain potential demand for menu that other restaurants
are not meet.
Details:
 To fill potential market gaps by affordable tasting menu, single country wine list, micro
sized desserts, it is require to put the core ingredients list together that will form a base of
cuisine. All the aspects of menu in including size, portion, possible wine pairings etc.
needs to be consider in development phase (Burghouwt, 2016). Develop a prototype of ideas to identify which one works the best. On the basis of results,
ascertain 5-10 signature dishes for restaurant.
Design and feedback:
 Design a menu layout in which important categories are placed at its corners. Position
item on menu according to the dishes that restaurant want to call more attention to. In
order to create visual hierarchy, distinct sized call out boxes can be used.
 Introduce dishes and take feedbacks from guests or diners to identify the most successful
dishes as well as areas for improvement.
Principles of menu planning:
Menu planning refers to the selection of menu which involves list of dishes to be served
for an event. Proper planning provides an advantage to restaurant in terms of increasing customer
satisfaction and maximizing sales. At the time of planning menu, it is required by an executive
chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to consider various principles of menu planning which
are defined as follows:
Strive for balance: Menu must be nutritious, appealing and tasty (Cousins, Lillicrap and
Weekes, 2014). Executive chef of restaurant requires to ensure that the distinct flavours added in
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menu must be balanced in order to form a winning combination. It is also require to use low fat
dishes to balance dish with high fat content.
Emphasise variety: Offering different variety of foods to guests is very necessary for
Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant. Adding variety of dishes in menu makes it more interesting
and appealing which in turn helps firm in getting attention of more customers (Eppinger and
Ulrich, 2015).
Add contrast: It is necessary to strive for contrast in flavour, texture and methods of
preparation. Executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant requires to avoid having similar
types of dishes in menu. They can cut vegetables in different shapes and size to administer
pleasing combination of mounds, cubes, strips and shredded bits.
Think about colour: In order to make the food looking more attractive and appealing,
executive chef needs to use colour combination that collectively blends well and also strives for
contrast colour presentation. For adding natural colours to menu, use of fruits and vegetables are
great option.
Consider eye appeal: Eye appealing food will be accepted more by customers. It is
necessary for Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to ensure that the food they serve is looking as
good as it tastes. Executive chef needs to consider colour of dishes, food and plates to be used to
serve them to enhance its entire presentation.
Types of menu:
Menu plays important role for restaurant in promoting its business. It provides
information regarding dishes along with its prices. Each restaurant follow different menu style
which is defined below:
Static Menu: It is the common kind of menu that has been widely accepted by restaurants
(Fan and et. al., 2015). In this, food items are categorized into groups and sub groups like salads,
desserts, salads, appetizers etc.
A'la Carte Menu: When distinct food dishes are sold individually, it will be the best
menu. For instance: if an individual order steak, potatoes and salads are not included in it. The
prices of every item must also be shown individually.
Table d'hote Menu: This type of menu is used in those restaurants where food dishes are
sold-out as multi course meal. Customers have less choices and have to pay for complete meal
instead of individual item.
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Du Jour Menu: When there is continuous change in food item, then this menu will be
suitable. Many restaurants serve special food on occasions or seasons. In such firm, Du Jour
menu is used.
Cycle menu: Some restaurants follow the practice of offering particular food dishes on
specific days (Hunter, O’callaghan and Califf, 2015). For instance: Chinese will be serve on
Monday, Italian on Tuesday etc. For such restaurants this menu is suitable.
Above mentioned are different types of menus among which static menu is used by
executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to serve their special organic and Indian
snack food to guests. The main reason behind selecting this menu style is that restaurant offer
distinct group of food items including coffee, beverages, Indian snacks, organic food etc.
Menu balance, taste, colour, texture, portion size, temperature and appearance:
A balanced menu including dishes with mixture of vegetables, proteins, fruit etc. This
balance can be attain by executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant number of
ingredients, condiments and cooking methods. Balanced menu is one of the essential aspect of
menu planning. It must offer food items in a manner that suits the purpose and concept of
formation, without diluting the USP of restaurant. It is the duty of executive chef to ensure
proper balance of ingredients, colour, flavour, texture, temperature, size, portion, taste etc. All
the ingredients are added in dishes in balanced way. At the time of preparing dishes, their colour,
texture, appearance, temperature, taste etc. are keeping in mind.
Commodity planning:
Commodity planning in the process of preparing purchasing plans for commodity goods
including widely traded agricultural products and raw materials, like rice, corn, wheat, fruits,
vegetables and many other food items (Kahn, 2014). Commodity planning allows executive chef
of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to anticipate costs of food products and determine its
required quantity.
Seasonal factors:
Seasonal factors highly influence demand for the product or food items as the some
ingredients for preparing food are available only in its seasonal time. Although, many goods are
available now in year round, so it help Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to reduce menu boredom
of producing food for climatic environment and season as well as to reflect tradition.
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Menu Options
Different types of options are available to the restaurant that they can add in their menu.
In order to make the restaurant successful one, it is very essential for it to provide customers with
various options, so that they can choose among they what they want to have (Meiselman, 2015).
Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant can provide guests with different options like coffee shop, bar
or lounge etc. In order to attract more customers an additional service, i.e., room service can also
be provided. This also helps restaurant to attract large number of visitors as a well along with
local people of country. In menu options of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant, Indian snacks,
organic food, coffee and some other beverages are included.
Menu structure: The structure of menu is a placeholder for its items and sub-menus. It is
needed by Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant that the menu structure should be good enough to
capture attention of guests. Their menu structure includes types of menus and under each type,
some items are included.
Menu language: The menu of restaurant should be written in simple language so that
guests are enable to clearly interpret what is being serve to them. So, it is required by executive
chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to ensure that menu is written in English along with use
of some French words to define sauce or garnish
Menu layout: For a restaurant business, menu is one of the important part as its design
reflects about the restaurant itself. A good and attractive menu will lure new guests to try the
restaurant once. So, executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant needs to consider menu
description, colours and layout (Mital and et. al., 2014). In designing menu, one needs to
consider page size, columns, positioning of food items, highlighted boxes, proportion size etc.
Menu Pricing
Menu pricing seems to be difficult for restaurant, but it is important for them to set
appropriate prices for each item by considering the incurred cost in preparing that item and
adding profit margins into it. Prices of menu put direct impact on profitability of restaurant, so it
is very necessary for food and beverage manager of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant to set
prices by considering all the aspects related to cost of food item. As the target customers of
restaurant are high class people so, premium prices are set by manager that guests are willing to
pay.
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Menu pricing applications: Manager of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant use mark up
pricing strategy for setting price of its each item in menu. In this, manager add cost of its item
and add mark up percentage on it. For instance: The cost of its organic food item is 50 pounds,
they add 15 pounds as their value and sell it to final consumer at 65 pounds.
Special pricing considerations: There are some special food products in menu of
Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant on which it charge high prices (Nanda, 2016). Like, a dish
named as Alperton Chef's special is sell by restaurant on high price which is considered in
special pricing consideration.
Pricing beverages and adding value: The price of beverages are also set by manager of
restaurant after keeping in view the spending power of customers. For beverages, minimum
prices are set by manager of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant including some added value.
Menu Analysis and Profitability
Menu analysis: It refers to the cost and sales data evaluation of menu in order to identify
needs and perceptions of customers and to enhance menu perceptions. By doing menu analysis,
manger of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant enables to take better decisions regarding operations
and marketing. Various actions are taken by manager of restaurant to determine popularity and
profitability of each item in menu and formulate an appropriate strategy that helps in enhancing
its sales and success. For doing menu analysis, manager constantly do in-depth assessment of
restaurant's brand image and metrics like cost of goods sold, gross profit and sales volume. They
mainly use menu engineering process for menu analysis (Rodriguez and Al-Ashaab, 2015).
Menu popularity index: It refers to the ratio of sales portion for an item of menu to total
sales portion. Popularity index depicts about how popular the product on menu is or percentage
of total customers selecting a provided menu item from alternative lists. Menu popularity index
of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant is based on notion of expected popularity of dishes.
For instance:
In the newly formed menu of restaurant, 4 items are new and each is expected to be
evenly popular, the sales for each would expected to be 25%
100% ÷ 4 = 25%
Menu engineering expect that the food item is popular if its sales is equal to 70% of what
is expected, i.e., an item is considered popular if its sales is:
25% x 70% = 17.5% of total sales
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Profit maximisation: It refers to the short or long run process through which restaurant
may determine input-output levels and price that leads to highest profit. For maximising profit of
restaurant, manager put various efforts like providing discounts to guests and satisfy them by
providing high quality food items which is healthy and contains adequate amount of nutrients.
Executive chef of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant prepare cost effective menu that ensures its
profit maximization (Szwejczewski, Goffin and Anagnostopoulos, 2015).
Customer spending: Before setting prices of menu items, it is very necessary for
restaurants to consider the spending power of customers that whether they will pay it or not. This
assists manager of Alperton Fine Dining Restaurant in setting appropriate prices for product as
per the willingness of customers to pay for the particular food item. In UK, consumer spending
on restaurants is around 87,960 million pounds in year 2017 (Consumer Spending on
Restaurants, 2017).
Cost of the menu: In order to cost a menu, it is essential to determine all the indirect and
direct costs included in operating it. While estimating cost of menu, manager of Alperton Fine
Dining Restaurant consider all costs such as labour cost, base selling price, prime cost per guest
etc.
CONCLUSION
As per the above mentioned report, it has been concluded that for an restaurant, menu
planning is considered to be the most essential aspect as assists in attracting more number of
customers. At the time of menu planning, various principles are required to be considered by
manager like balance of nutrition, taste, colour, ingredients, quality of food etc. At the time of
setting prices of each dish, it is necessary to consider all the direct and indirect cost incurred in it
and spending ability of customers.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Arboletti, A., and et. al., Accenture Global Services Ltd, 2014. Automotive industry high
performance capability assessment. U.S. Patent 8,781,882.
Bruun, H.P.L., and et. al., 2015. PLM system support for modular product development.
Computers in Industry. 67. pp.97-111.
Burghouwt, G., 2016. Airline network development in Europe and its implications for airport
planning. Routledge.
Cousins, J., Lillicrap, D. and Weekes, S., 2014. Food and beverage service. Hachette UK.
Eppinger, S. D. and Ulrich, K.T., 2015. Product design and development.
Fan, B., and et. al., 2015. A network methodology for structure-oriented modular product
platform planning. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing. 26(3). pp.553-570.
Hunter, N.L., O’callaghan, K.M. and Califf, R.M., 2015. Engaging patients across the spectrum
of medical product development: view from the US Food and Drug Administration.
Jama. 314(23). pp.2499-2500.
Kahn, K.B., 2014. New product forecasting: an applied approach. Routledge.
Meiselman, H.L., 2015. A review of the current state of emotion research in product
development. Food Research International. 76. pp.192-199.
Mital, A., and et. al., 2014. Product development: a structured approach to consumer product
development, design, and manufacture. Elsevier.
Nanda, V., 2016. Quality management system handbook for product development companies.
CRC Press.
Rodriguez, K. and Al-Ashaab, A., 2015. Knowledge web-based system architecture for
collaborative product development. Computers in Industry. 56(1). pp.125-140.
Szwejczewski, M., Goffin, K. and Anagnostopoulos, Z., 2015. Product service systems, after-
sales service and new product development. International Journal of Production
Research. 53(17). pp.5334-5353.
Tyagi, S., and et. al., 2015. Value stream mapping to reduce the lead-time of a product
development process. International Journal of Production Economics. 160. pp.202-212.
Xu, L.D., and et. al., 2014. Object-oriented templates for automated assembly planning of
complex products. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. 11(2).
pp.492-503.
Online:
Menu Development, 2018. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.escoffieronline.com/menu-development/>
Consumer Spending on Restaurants, 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.statista.com/statistics/476637/restaurants-and-cafes-consumer-spending-
uk/>
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