Short pieces on running a menu people order from — written by the people building this, not by a content team.
Poolside and rooftop service is the hardest room in hospitality to staff and the easiest place to lose a second drink.
Photographs move orders towards whatever is pictured. That is useful once and expensive if you point it at the wrong dish.
Most loyalty schemes fail the same way, and the fix is usually to make the reward smaller and much closer.
Seasonal menus sell better and cost less to run. The thing that stops most places doing it is the print run.
A bakery sells out on purpose, changes daily, and answers the same four questions all morning. The menu should carry all three.
Opening hours stop being a line on the door and start deciding what a guest can do at eleven at night.
The free tools are genuinely good at the job they do. Knowing where that job ends saves you doing this twice.
What to watch in the seven days after the codes go on the tables, and the one habit that decides whether guests trust the menu.
The commission is the number everybody quotes. It is not the number that decides whether delivery is worth doing.
Allergen and dietary notes are the part of the menu a guest actually depends on. Here is how to write them so they hold up on a Friday night.
The seconds between a guest sending an order and someone accepting it are the most honest service number you have.
Dining rooms tried this in 2020 and most of them stopped. The parts they kept are the parts that were always worth keeping.
Table service came to pubs in a hurry and half of them kept it. What works, what to leave at the bar, and the words a British menu needs.
People do not read a menu the way they read a page. Knowing the order their eye takes is most of menu design.
What accessibility law actually asks of a restaurant menu, why a PDF fails all of it, and what to check on your own phone tonight.
A truck sells to people standing up, in the weather, with a queue behind them. That changes everything about the menu.
A printed menu is read across two open pages. A phone shows about eight lines at a time. Here is what to change when your menu moves onto the screen.
Costs move constantly and menus move once a year. Here is how to close that gap without reprinting anything or scaring a regular.
Table service restaurants are still running short of the staff they used to have. What actually filled the gap, and what did not.
Tent card, sticker, or on the check holder — what works in a real dining room, and what to write next to the code so people actually scan it.
A café menu moves more than a restaurant menu does — pastries sell out by ten, the oat milk did not arrive, the special changes weekly.
The complaints are real and worth taking seriously. Most of them are about how the menu was built, and every one has a fix.
Table numbering looks like the smallest decision in the room. It is the one that decides how long a new server takes to be useful.
Plate cost in the smallest number of steps, and the four corners of your menu that the number puts you in front of.
Taprooms were built around a counter, and the room grew past it. What to do about the fifty feet between a table and the taps.
The oldest word in a kitchen, what it actually covers, and why the person who calls it should be the person who taps it.
