5 Menu Design Tips Restaurants Can Learn From Chuy's Tex Mex

The Menu Mix is a regular podcast that takes a look at looking at leading restaurant groups to reveal the techniques and considerations behind the way they design their menus and run their businesses. Subscribe on YouTube to follow.

In this episode George Wetz (CEO) and Matt Holy (Director of Strategic Projects) discuss the five essential menu techniques that Chuy's Tex Mex uses to run successful restaurants.

Episode highlights:

Using space and color to direct attention

"If you look at the first page of the Chuy's menu, you'll notice that there's actually only five menu items in the entire top half of the menu. So a lot of menu real estate is used to really drive these five menu items. There are the appetizers and sharing things that are used to get the meal going."

Using visual cues to drive cross-sells

"There's not a lot of actual photography on this menu. Instead, the imagery is reserved for illustration. The first page of the menu you're going to see right at the top, taking up all this space, two or three really important illustrations. The first one that really grabs your attention is this 'Heck' that goes with everything." 

Menu pricing strategies

"Pretty much everything on the core menu except for the fajitas, is all between the range of $8 and $13. So if you think about that, everything from appetizers to mains, quick lunch bites is all within a very tight range that they've applied to their cocktails as well."

Managing menu complexity

"There's some very clever and intentional decisions they've made around the execution of menu items. A lot of the dishes use very similar ingredients. A lot of the prepped ingredients are utilized all across the menu. so this leads a minimal fruit food waste, but also a really efficient use of any of the prep, that has been done for the sauces, the chicken, beef, etc."

Catering as an additional meal occasion 

"Catering has been a huge growth area for many restaurants over recent years because as technology evolved, it's become a lot easier to now run a catering effort. There are many providers out there that can offer this.  The reason they have done that is, because they can cater for a hundred plus people from Chuy's and it could be for business meetings, it could be for weddings, or some big event."  

Thanks for watching.