Menu Planning and Design: Maximizing Profitability at Pony and Trap

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of menu planning and design, focusing on the principles, customer and business requirements, and strategies for maximizing profitability within the context of the Pony and Trap restaurant. The introduction establishes the importance of menu design as a communication tool and outlines the goals of the assignment, which includes evaluating menu planning principles, identifying customer and business requirements, and producing a realistic menu plan. The report delves into the principles of menu planning, including food habits, customer types, occasions, resource availability, and menu attractiveness. It also considers different menu types such as set menus, table d'hote menus, and à la carte menus, as well as constraints on menu planning. The report then examines customer requirements like trends, preferences, and price/quality factors, and business requirements such as staff training, product quality, and dietary considerations. A menu development plan is presented, addressing legal requirements, menu design based on function, menu layout, and menu balance. The report concludes with a sample menu for the Pony and Trap restaurant, designed to meet customer and business needs and maximize profitability, considering appetizers, main courses, and pricing strategies. The report emphasizes the importance of aligning menu design with customer preferences, market trends, and business objectives to achieve success in the hospitality industry.

Menu Development,
Planning and design

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
P1:Examine the principles of menu planning and design to meet customer and business
requirements for a range of different menus...............................................................................1
P2 Determine the customer and business requirements which need to be fulfilled to maximise
profits for a range of different menus.........................................................................................3
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................5
Covered in PPT...........................................................................................................................5
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................5
P5 Produce a realistic plan to develop a menu which meets customer and business
requirements to maximise profitability for a chosen organisation..............................................5
P6 Produce a menu which meets customer and business requirements to maximise
profitability for a chosen organisation........................................................................................6
P7 Test and evaluate the menu produced....................................................................................7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Menu in a hospitality sector is a subject for communication with customer that
illuminates the statement of available food and beverage with undersigned price tags of the
items. Menu design is planned by ascertaining what the outlet looking to cater for by keeping in
mind the type of guests. However, the main aim of well planned design is to provide better
customer service that would meet customer satisfaction and business objectives. The Pony and
Trap restaurant located in the busy street of the London near by Briston in chew valley (Kim
Sauerwald and Sukpatch, 2021). Restaurant has cosy and lovely infrastructure but still the menu
are less communicative as there is need for revise menu design. Therefore, following assignment
present the menu planning at the Pony and Trap restaurant in order to meet customer and
business requirement. Following assignment also highlighted key consideration regarding menu
designing , costing and pricing to meet profitability goal of business.
Task 1
P1:Examine the principles of menu planning and design to meet customer and business
requirements for a range of different menus.
Menu is termed as the heart of a restaurant therefore, menu planning is managerial
function of The Pony and Trap restaurant in which manager is responsible for presentation of the
recipes because menu indicate the needs of customer.
Principles of menu planning
While considering the menu design and planning for the Pony and Trap restaurant,
following principles are necessary to be considered-
 Food habit-
In menu planning, the Pony & Trap restaurant need to access the food habit of the
targeted customer because it is servicing bar product to many customer; therefore, it is essential
to know the food habit or local people. Most of the people in London prefer Somerset white wine
rather than red wine, so the Pony & Trap hotel can mentioned Somerset white wine in more
highlight for eye appeal of customer (Baiomy, Jones and Goode, 2019).
 Types of customer -
In menu planning, the Pony & Trap restaurant need to predict its potential customer
based on the demographic and lifestyle aspect in order to provide quick service to segmented
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user. For instance, the Pony & Trap can mentioned burger with French fries to satisfy child need
who come with his parents.
 Occasions- In festivals and occasions like birthday party, Christmas eve and new year
celebration, the Pony & Trap restaurant can alter its menu by adding an additional
appetiser.
 Availability of resource- It is duty of the chef to ensure that the Pony & Trap restaurant
have healthy cooking equipment in hands, apart from that the Pony & Trap restaurant
also need to ensure they have handy available raw material for the dish mentioned in the
menu (Li, . and Chen, , 2020). Creating an eye attractiveness menu- While formation of menu design, chef must
considered colour and contrast of menu, an eye appealing menu have greater chances of
meeting customer need this is because menu design affect the consumer sentience,
amount and quality.
Types of menu for the Pony & Trap restaurant Set menu-
It is a type of menu at a set price
with a little amount of
dishes choose from.
Normally the Pony & Trap restaurant can used it for large
Function feast like new year and Christmas eve.
 Table d'hote menu –
It is a type of menu that has fixed number of courses with limited choice from the course.
Moreover, the selling price of the dish is fixed that is why it is more popular and most use type
of menu. The recipe in this menu is ordinarily acquirable
at a set time this provide it easier for the Pony & Trap restaurant to do more preparation in at
early for quick and convenient service. (Liu Wang and Tzeng, 2018).
 à la carte menu-
This type of menu provide complete list of an individual dish with its respective price, in
à la carte menu consumer have broader choice of recipe from the course. However, dishes within
the à la carte menu need a specific preparation time. Dishes within this menu are changing from
season to season.
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Menu planning constraints
The primary constraints of menu planning at the Pony & Trap restaurant are mainly its
guests therefore, the Pony & Trap restaurant should first understand its guests or clients nature,
lifestyle, food habit, and their preferences so that effective menu design can be planned. Apart
from that production and service capability of the firm is also imposing restriction in menu
planning this may be faculty layout or design that include available floor space for service.
Moreover, skills of available staff in regards to cooking and servicing to customer and what dish
they effectively cook in given period of time. Another constraint of menu is time, consumers
whose requirement fulfil quickly tends to have better customer experience and satisfaction. So
manager need to identify the time required for the preparation of particular dish (Dovey and et.al,
2021). Another major constraint in menu planning is cost of food, the Pony & Trap restaurant
should plan target pricing by ensuring that targeted costing is not so high because hight cost may
turn of the potentials consumers.
P2 Determine the customer and business requirements which need to be fulfilled to maximise
profits for a range of different menus
Customer requirement- Customer requirement and preference are given first priority
while planning and designing menu design, this is because when the Pony & Trap restaurant
understand customer requirement, it can deliver better customer service. Following are the basic
customer requirement that need to be addressed in different menu for maximising profitability- Trends-
It has been observed that food and beverage industry is hot changing industry with
introducing a newly trends and innovation, this change customer trend and preference due to
change in customer lifestyle and food habit. The newly trend can shrink and simplify the menu
of the Pony & Trap restaurant to make sense with customer trends. Currently the trends of
veggies is spreading much as people are being health conscious and study show meat food are
dangerous for health. For instance, the Pony & Trap restaurant dinner often asked for any kind
of recommendation for vegetarian dish. When menu design is adhering with current customer
trends, there are more chances of raising sales revenue.
 Preference & demands of customer
Often change of customer trends change customer preference and demands this is
because they are avoiding or including several food allergens to get desired taste, like avoiding
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spread of butter, clients asking for semi skimmed milk with cappuccino. However, customer
preference and taste are so powerful that it can change ongoing menu (Fusté-Forné, 2021).
(Kim, 2020). Basic consumer demands are being classified as demanding for better flavour,
pleasing aesthetic environment, and worth price of particular dish. Often dinners wants
convenience in dining for which they are willing to pay extra for that, the Pony & Trap restaurant
can offer variety of dish in its menu so that customer would have wide choice for its demands. Price and quality factor: Quality of food can leverage a remarkable taste for customer,
customer at the Pony & Trap restaurant are looking for a set quality standard for that they
are willing to pay additional. However, those who are paying low would experience low
quality of service, so it is most important for the Pony & Trap restaurant to meet the price
with offered quality.
Businesses requirement- Business requirement are consider to be set of requirement that
the Pony & Trap restaurant need would need in its menu designing and planning to achieve
profitability of menu formulations following are some basic requirements-
 Organisation training for staff-
To serve customer effectively, the Pony & Trap restaurant would require a competency
taskforce with business commitment. The Pony & Trap restaurant can build employee
commitment by providing training regarding how to cook within the time using a particular
utensils and kitchen item, how to prepare food and serve it to customer to meet modern market
trend and customer preference.
 Product quality and consistency
Quality is substance of every business in hospitality sector, the Pony & Trap restaurant
can ensure product quality by hiring the right chefs, training and managing their efforts to
achieve set standard. The Pony & Trap restaurant can do routine check-up of its quality audit to
improve food and service quality. Dietary consideration and health features
In UK, a restaurant need to clear current food legislation regarding dietary consideration
and health features, these general and main law should be considered in the menu preparation
such as having hygiene of the foodstuff this may create an additional responsibility to consider
hygiene in preparing to servicing of dish (PUSIRAN and et.al, 2021).
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Task 2
Covered in PPT
Task 3
P5 Produce a realistic plan to develop a menu which meets customer and business requirements
to maximise profitability for a chosen organisation
Earning profit while serving customer is the foremost aim of every business, while
preparing menu, following are the key consideration which need to be followed by planning or
designing menu for the Pony & Trap restaurant- Legal requirement- While developing menu, Pony restaurant need to take care of certain
laws and regulations such as food and safety health act and hygine act. Crafting menu
within legal requirement delivers sustainability in menu and dinner are willing to pay for
sustainability dine. Apart from this Pony & Trap also is also adhering Dietary
consideration and health features in designing its menu by subduing certain food
allergens and preparing gluten free diet in considering health safety of the diabetes type
2 patients (Lai and et.al, 2019).
 Menu designing according to types of function:
In designing menu, the Pony & Trap restaurant also need to formulate its menu by undertaking
and predicting various functions like Christmas eve, new year celebration and parties. For
instance, the pony & Trap would offer red wine with Somerset white win during new year and
Christmas celebration.
 Designing a menu layout
After anticipating with legal and situational aspect, the Pony & Trap restaurant need to design a
menu layout that must be eye appealing so customer can find its requirement clearly. In planning
menu layout, gives more priority to use boxes that highlight particular segments and colour
contrast and fonts are also consider in menu design (Mohatt and et.al, 2018). In place of picture,
illustration are most useful because they are more easily communicate restaurant personality.
 Menu balance & creativity
Finally while creating menu, includes compete description of the menu that highlight what items
you are servicing what ingredient each food have because people of this generation are being
more health conscious and they wants to know each and every ingredient in a particular dish. So
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in desiging menu, there is need of great description and also need a creativity like engaging
language, colour and pictures to bring attention of customer to particular item.
P6 Produce a menu which meets customer and business requirements to maximise profitability
for a chosen organisation
The Pony & Trap restaurant
(Menu)
(For March- June- Dinner)
Why not start with classic chef menu including potatoes with ewe's curd and vegetables served
with broccoli and sesame @ £ 60
Appetiser Gin cured sea trout, Cucumber, picked sapphire @ £ 9 Chargrilled pigeon breast, Carrot, Walnut & Apple @ £ 9 Smoked Haddock, Sweetcorn & Lovrage Broth @ £ 9
Desert Course Cranberry custard @ £ 5 Blueberry with Pima's @ £ 5
 Yule log @ £ 5
Main Course Crispy Polenta, Backed Salt Celeriac, Cavolo Nero @ £ 17 Stone Bass, Cornish Cram, Haunch of Venison, Burnt Onion with Fish Sauce @ £ 15 Whole Grouse, Elderberries, Wild Mushroom & Turnip @ £ 13
Snacks Pork, onion& sage Quail's Scotch Egg @ £ 7 Grilled Sardine & Chopped green herbs @ £ 3
 Bristol Sherry cream with picked onion @ £ 2.25
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Beverage Egyptian Tea @ £ 5 Nescafe with Milk @ £ 5 Turkish Coffee @ £ 5
 Cold coffee @ £ 5
Wines and brewery White Somerset wine @ £ 50 Red wine @ £ 38 Chilled beer @ £ 25
 Rose wine @ £ 21
P7 Test and evaluate the menu produced
After producing or developing menu, manager or chef of the Pony & Trap restaurant
need to evaluate and test its produced menu to track or evaluate quality and effectiveness of
menu by using following key measures or instruments-
 Key performance indicators (KPI)-
KPI is useful technique in context of the Pony & Trap restaurant, in KPI, organisational key
performance indicator like rising sales and customer inflow after introducing the new menu are
being consider (Kaban, and Nasution, 2020). This matrix is more helpful and useful to evaluate
the effectiveness of the menu and made adjustment if business and customer requirement. Customer feedback/ review- The Pony & Trap restaurant can collect reguar customer
feedback and review in form of comment and tweets from its social media handling and
Tripadvisor. Customer opinion is more helpful in context of the Pony & Trap restaurant
to alter or adding additional feature to meet customer requirement and trend in order to
earn customer faith and satisfaction because customer satisfaction is backbone of a
hospitality sector. The Pony & Trap restaurant can send thank you message with a survey
in regards to check customer experience over new menu after customer dine.
 Benchmark- Benchmark is measuring instrument for the Pony & Trap restaurant in
which it evaluate and compare its menu performance with its competitor. In
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benchmarking, the Pony & Trap restaurant can identified its best performance achieved
in regards to dinner dine. Here, the Pony & Trap measures the dinner dine sales of its
competitor Woodspeen and identifies the key gap and polish its menu to fill the gap in
smaller time to acquire that opportunities (Leib, and et.al, 2018).
CONCLUSION
From the dynamic of carried out study it has been concluded that menu leads a critical
role to fulfil customer satisfaction and business goals. However, it has been found that while
planning menu, certain business need to adhere in order to obtain customer and business
requirements. It has been analysed that there are certain key consideration which need to
consider while costing and pricing menu such as price of competitors, labour cost and etc.
Moreover, it has been found that in evaluation and testing a planned menu, benchmark, KPI and
customer feedback are more useful tool to rectify or revise menu of the restaurant to meet
profitability goals.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Kim, Y.H., Sauerwald, P. and Sukpatch, K., 2021. Are you looking for special menu? An
examination of variety seeking behavior for special menu (VaSM) model. International
Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science. 23. p.100295.
Baiomy, A. E., Jones, E. and Goode, M. M., 2019. The influence of menu design, menu item
descriptions and menu variety on customer satisfaction. A case study of Egypt. Tourism
and Hospitality Research. 19(2). pp.213-224.
Liu, Y., Wang, H. and Tzeng, G. H., 2018. From measure to guidance: Galactic model and
sustainable development planning toward the best smart city. Journal of Urban
Planning and Development. 144(4). p.04018035.
Dovey, K., and et.al., 2021. Informal settlement is not a euphemism for ‘slum’: what’s at stake
beyond the language?. International Development Planning Review. pp.1-13.
Fusté-Forné, F., 2021. Robot chefs in gastronomy tourism: What's on the menu?. Tourism
Management Perspectives. 37. p.100774.
Kim, M., 2020. The effect of 99-ending calories and anticipated guilt on restaurant menu
development strategy. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 89. p.102570.
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PUSIRAN, A.K., and et.al., 2021. Food Culture Integration in Menu Plan for a Sustainable
Homestay Business. Journal of Environmental Management and Tourism. 12(1).
pp.258-265.
Lai, H. B.J ., and et.al., 2019. Can restaurant revenue management work with menu
analysis?. Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. 18(3). pp.204-212.
Mohatt, N. V., and et.al., 2018. A menu of options: Resources for preventing veteran suicide in
rural communities. Psychological services. 15(3). p.262.
Kaban, R. and Nasution, R. J., 2020. Penerapan Metode Rapid Application Development (RAD)
dalam Perancangan Sistem Pemesanan Menu menggunakan Quick Response (QR)
Code. MEANS (Media Informasi Analisa dan Sistem). 5(2). pp.144-152.
Leib, T., and et.al., 2018. Web-based menu design: a conjoint value analysis. International
Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration. 19(4), pp.361-373.
Li, Y. Y. and Chen, C. C., 2020, September. Exploring the interface design of smartwatch
application menu. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics-
Taiwan (ICCE-Taiwan) (pp. 1-2). IEEE.
Kim, E. and Nicolau, J.L., 2021. Impact of the Menu Labeling Act Upon the Market Value of
Foodservice Firms. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. 45(3). pp.447-473.
González-García, S., and et.al., 2020. Tracking the environmental footprints of institutional
restaurant service in nursery schools. Science of The Total Environment, 728, p.138939.
Assunção Botelho, R. B., Araújo, W. M. C. and Zandonadi, R. P., 2020. Main Regional Foods
Offered in Northeast Brazilian Restaurants and Motives for Their Offer. Journal of
Culinary Science & Technology. pp.1-18.
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