Differentiating the challenges in each one of the business models.
Moving forward with the business Menu, will depend on whether it will be used in a “to-go”, “delivery” or “take out” environment business model, or if the menu is targeting the In-dining experience. What works in one, does not necessarily work in another.The dinning-in experience is based on the fact that all patrons that go inside the business premises, will be part of the ticket, will share a experience, and in general, your restaurant will welcome them and get the whole party business once you accommodate them into their places, where they will spend the following 30 min to 2 hours. It is very unlikely that once seated, they´ll just take a peek into the menu and leave for the restaurant next door. The menu is in this case, an entertaining material -with all due respect- as the cat does, when playing with its stuffed toys. The customer will look at it, play with it, and make up his mind once one of the restaurant staff interact with the customer to take their order.
The delivery business model is a completely different scenario. Customers usually start by “window shopping” into virtual malls called “Delivery apps”, web search engines or their preferable method of delivery or choosing their meal. They likely will have the task to choose the meal only for themselves, since the rest of the group will be doing the same in their own mobile phones, tablets or computers, picking and choosing from whatever options they might have already decided, or in most cases, taken their eyes on the screen. There is no time, but still a relentless competition on the same screen. The Menu will play a completely different role from the one in the in-dining experience. The menu for Delivery service -assuming the risk to sound quite aggressive, but keeping up with the animals’ behaviors similes, the menu for Delivery will have to behave as the snake when preying!
We see the Menu, whether as a hard copy handed out to the customer, a web base, or a menu board, as one of the critical warm points in your Business’s customer journey; precisely the moment where the business is making the case to the customers for them to choose the experience they will go with. The Menu is so important that it requires a lot of thinking, starting with selecting those products we want to advertise and how those products will behave in the two main business models we have been discussing: Delivery Service and take-away. For further information, look for Delivery and Take-away Food. The Menu, Choosing the Players
The Menu has different roles in the food service businesses while having a dinning-in experience, a take-away, or a delivery experience. The reason is quite simple, and Menus’ role is played as well in different stages of your own and self designed business customer journey.
The Menu: Different roles depending on the business model
As always, the first thing when elaborating a marketing material, is to know what do I want to convey? Who are my clients? What do they need? How do they behave? Why/ what for am I doing this? The Menu for delivery service or take-away must be not only a list of dishes, and this is why we will talk about how to design a Menu for Delivery, but first, we need to understand why the roles and purposes of the Menus are so different from the In-dining model to the Delivery service and take-away model in despite of having so many things in common.The in-dining experience Menu. “Entertainment, ...the Cat or the stuffed toy”. The menu for this business model needs to be appealing for a wide range of tastes and interests. The objective under the conditions described above, would be to satisfy all guests and the diverse needs that each group might have. It also has to capture the interest of each one of your guests visiting the restaurant, and invite them to have not only a main course, but to expand their ticket value by requesting an appetizer, some extra drinks, a great dessert with a cup of coffee, etc. When designing an in-dining menu, you are targeting a customer with time and focus on your business, because they decided to be -and they already are- physically in it. Your business need is to drive customer attention to expand their ticket and spend time in your business while doing so.
The Delivery and take-away Menu. “Preying,… the Snake”. This menu is called upon to capture the impulse of an easily distractible prospective customer, retaining their attention long enough to have them decide they want to have that meal in front of them pictured on the screen, rather than any of the countless other options, one click away from your menu. Like the snake, the objective is biting customer attention while wrapping up his interest in buying your food, and hopefully be aggressive enough to catch any of the other patrons that will order from somewhere else their food away from home, at home. Your business need is to drive in customers to your online business, and try to retain them for future experiences.
The Menu for Delivery has definitely a different purpose! This menu would need to be “aggressive”, captivatingly appealing to the eye, easy to understand, and most importantly, concise to avoid your customer to leave without doing business with you. Remember that the Menu for Delivery is an instrument that seeks to facilitate interaction, communication "at a distance" and therefore, it is an instance or point of contact in the "journey" of your Customer with your Business and your brand. You want, in fact, you need it to be easy and "friendly". In the Delivery or Take-away business model there is and might not be in the near future a restaurant staff member available for explaining anything to the prospective customer.
Either in an in-dining experience, or a delivery or a take-away food experience, there is no doubt -at least from our point of view- that the Menu is much more useful than it seems like at a first glance. If it is thoroughly thought and designed, and if we keep in mind the purpose it has to fulfill and the kind of customers it has to get to, the Menu can be a customizable tool for us, for our businesses, to engage with our customers, something extremely important in today’s way of doing business.
So, give it a though. What does your menu look like? how does it work in the different platforms you have it posted? Is it serving your purpose? How would you improve it?