How To Optimize Menu Performance With Advanced Analytics

Did you know that 93% of consumers look at a menu before they decide where to eat?  

Working in the hospitality industry, your menu can either make or break your business. Which makes it even more important that you optimize your menu to meet customer expectations. 

Knowing the right changes to make means getting deep into your analytics data. So how can you optimize your menu performance with advanced analytics?

Look at your menu sales 

When you’re looking to optimize your menu performance, start by reviewing your menu sales. This helps you to understand the dishes being chosen by customers and how often they’re ordered. It will help you identify:

• Your high-performing dishes.
• The dishes that need their recipe adapted.
• The ones that need removing from the menu altogether. 

At Yumpingo our Customer Experience Management system can help you pinpoint what parts of your menu are performing well and what needs changing. This can help you boost customer satisfaction levels and raise profits. 

“One of the best things we’ve done is put the iPad in the kitchen right next to the pass, on live … and we just pointed the teams at it and they love it.” – Carl Morris, co-founder at Yard & Coop.

We use real-time feedback, accessing customer opinions through in-store devices, as this can help gain more accurate insights as the customer has their experience fresh in their minds. Many of our users have the live view open on an iPad in the kitchen, which allows staff to see how their dishes are doing and make changes.

Carl Morris, co-founder at Yard & Coop explains the impact having the data come in live, can have on the teams. “We put it in the kitchen on live mode so the chefs can see products and their results. They’re creating something that’s going out and people are scoring them. And they love that, because it really energizes a team.”

 

“And even when feedback is negative, they tackle that by quickly assessing and diving into why that wasn’t quite right and then they fix it which then rewards them. And it really empowers the team.”

We also gain post-dine feedback where we use emails to gain customer reviews once the diners have left the restaurant, helping to increase your response volumes. 

Gain customer feedback

Collecting customer feedback is a great way to understand how your diners perceive your menu. At Yumpingo, we ask your customers questions about the exact dish they opted for. This gives granular details about each item on your menu, such as its quality and portion size. This provides you with the information you need to make data-driven decisions on adapting ingredients or removing dishes to improve customer satisfaction. 

Customer feedback can also help potential diners make informed decisions on whether they visit your restaurant as they can see customer satisfaction scores and menu reviews through online platforms like Tripadvisor. 

Trial new menu items

Testing new menu items is a great way to understand what your customers like. You can do this by offering specials, limited-time-only meals, taster menus and asking for feedback. This can help you gain detailed feedback on whether the dishes met the diner’s expectations or not. 

Testing new menu items can also help you become more profitable as you’ll be offering trending and popular food your customers are looking for. 

Optimize your menu design

Optimizing your menu for easy customer usage is essential to restaurant success. When customers can’t easily understand your menu it can cause confusion, decrease customer satisfaction and could even deter them from visiting your restaurant. 

When optimizing your menu you should:

• Make it easy to follow 
• Avoid overcomplicating the layout 
• Price dishes effectively 
• Consider using images to help customers make their decision 
• Consider having an online version of your menu

Ultimately having a poor menu design can overcomplicate the ordering experience leading to negative customer experiences and even the customer walking away.

Review menu performance

Reviewing your menu performance will help you keep track of your most popular periods in the year, month or week, which dishes are performing the best and the dishes that aren’t as successful.  

Ideally, you should conduct a performance review after every menu change to see if it achieved the goals you set. You can then compare this to previous menu reviews to spot trends in dish popularity through different seasons and days of the week, helping you create a fully tailored menu for your target audience. 

With Yumpingo’s ability to gather detailed descriptions of each of your dishes ordered by your customers, it can make menu reviews easier as you have in-depth information on every item helping you make informed decisions about which ones to keep, remove or improve. 

Update your menu regularly 

Updating your menu regularly is important as it helps you keep up with trends and changing customer demands. For example, you can change your menu based on the season, available produce, customer feedback and popular dishes. This helps you stay ahead of the curve, beat your competition and truly satisfy your customers. 

Adding on to this, saying things like ‘seasonal meals’ or using ‘seasonal veg’ on your menu can entice customers as people tend to want to try what’s in season. It can also help you cut costs as buying fruit and vegetables that are readily available are cheaper than other produce that are out of season.  

So if you’re looking to optimize your menu performance with advanced analytics, book a demo for our Customer Experience Management platform today to see how we can help you!

Pairing our Customer Experience Management platform with our clever Smart Actions can help you massively improve your customer experience and menus by making data-driven decisions that are almost guaranteed to lead you to success.