Test of Thyme Episode #23: How Do We Pick Menu Items

hello everybody hi Jamie and Marcus here welcome to test of time love passion and hustle in the restaurant business episode number 23. excellent yeah so we're in the middle this week of doing some menu redesigning our menu adding some things taking some things off and a lot of people we had a lot of questions yeah people ask like how do you know what to take off

this and that so how do we speak about to eat quite a bit um so we see a lot we see lots of menus we see ideas um and we're always looking for different new things and we also have people that we talk to right that we um other restaurant owners that we that we Mastermind Mastermind with and go over things with and Coach so um

so yeah so we're we're in the process of updating our menus and uh deleting some things yeah bringing you some new things so what's our what's what's our first step when we when we run running reports yeah so we go into our POS I run reports on um the top sellers the bottom sellers um where we want to move things what should we be changing why

is it not selling what is the reason behind that so we we run analytics we run numbers so we can see um you know what what maybe we're I'm doing really good on and what we're making money on what we're not making money on yeah so it's shocking how how much prices have gone up on things so it's shocking because when you ask your Chef or

you ask your wait staff or you just what do you sell the most what do you like what do we sell the most of like is this they really don't they can't tell you accurate but when you run numbers and you see it's accurate you sold 300 of this burger and 65 of the other type of burger you're like and the third burger in there is

that 200 you're like something's wrong here like that one that's 60 that's song 65 might be in might be a great burger it might be a Fantastic Burgers we put it on the menu and we love it because we put everything in the menu we love but it's not selling there's a reason like you know we have a burger on the menu with the cheese that

people don't know and maybe they're not ordering it because they don't know the cheese and our staff is not is not telling them what the cheese is so right so there's a couple ways around this you take it off get it off put on new menu item on it yeah train your staff to sell that dish better um or in the case of let's say it

was a vegetarian burger versus beef burgers you'd want to keep those 65 vegetarians happy that are ordering that burger because they're probably bringing in people that are eating the other Burgers exactly so it's really not a cut and dry answer of what should we take off what should we take off or by numbers my numbers now we should take it off or redo it if the

price if the price is not live so the menu of minutes not costed out you're in trouble first of all so if that burger that's selling for selling 300 of those burgers and you have running when we do have a food cost you need to bump the price up the prices get pumped up and I can tell you that if you're running if something's if something's

winning by a landslide you can automatically bump it up anyway that's a tactic that a lot of restaurant tours do including us if something's winning by landslide that people will pay another Buck for it another two buck whatever it is 50 Cents more if it's an appetizer right so that's a whole extra 300 that you have now to pay staff pay bills do something else right

so um that's one of the strategies now wrote a book called the million dollar offer the gym book did you read that book on on some Rosie he's the guy who does gyms so he said something like we did I did he says something super important in that book the biggest takeaway from that book is you need to make it impossible for your guests to say

no right no I we're not going to go there no I'm not going to buy that no so you always need like what's called a lost leader what brings people into the restaurant the numbers quite don't work out on but it's hard for them to say no so for example like 24 Hour Fitness when it's at nine bucks a month like you don't miss nine bucks

you don't care about losing nine bucks a month if you don't go to the gym for six months you just don't care if you're paying 150 a month and you haven't got a gym for six months you're gonna care you're gonna be like okay I'm not gonna spend 150 bucks or that 69 bucks or 70 bucks or I'm I'm not going to do nine bucks I

don't care so yesterday we went to a place to eat and there was an offer on on the menu that was for me it was hard to say no to it was a bottomless wine glass if you bought an entree you buy the entree you weren't going to get an entree I wasn't going to get an entree right I wasn't getting an appetizer I wasn't even

an entree but for 25 bucks the wine glasses were 14 each I was definitely drinking two glasses of wine so I'm like okay I can get a bottomless wine glass for 25. I'm definitely gonna get my money back in the first two glasses and instead of buying an appetizer and buy an entree and four glasses of wine later I was or was it five glasses uh

probably five probably five five glasses later five glasses later it was it was I won I won because it was hard but here's the thing I would go back for that knowing that they have that offer I would totally go back for that of course I would go back you would too yeah so they won me they made the offer so irresistible that it's hard to

say no to yeah now that's what we're trying to do on our menu we have lobster nine we have some things that are lost leaders like that we're trying to do that and so we've been brainstorming lately like what can we do that's easy to serve um great food costs can lower the price drastically and package it up so a couple can sit down and be

occupied for an hour we were occupied for an hour and a half now while I was drinking all my wine everybody else was drinking more drinks at the table right so they won they they they they ultimately won but I feel like I won too right so I guess the question is what is your um big promo gonna be what is your big offer going to

be right to your guests to your for your business whatever it might be right so I think that's the question that we're posing right now to you while you're listening to us is what is your big offer going to be and what are you thinking about doing and what do you need to do to get more guests in your seats right you can be a one-time

event or it can be a weekly a weekly every Monday every Tuesday it can be once a month um for us I know like our crawfish boils are super popular we probably need to plan those for the summer because Summer's Here people ask us about them those are super popular and we make a lot of money on them um but we give a good deal slower

we used we were doing um uh book your birthday party book your birthday party um and it was a free birthday party we were doing free holidays I want to talk about this this free birthday party yeah so a lot of restaurants will give free up appetizers or Nosh or give great prices on drinks or something but imagine if you identified people who had a birthday

and said if you bring at least eight of your friends in which we did this you bring at least eight of your friends in we'll give you small bites at the bar for free spark day they're celebrating eight people or more they're coming to party and they're coming to drink and they're staying for dinner and so you give them you make some appetizers some food some

Nosh and you put it out and that's it an hour and a half of hors d'oeuvres small bites we called it and we get a free birthday party and I don't think we ever lost in any of those no never never watched any of those do those for years never lost you should probably go back to doing those because again I think they should have an

option between a free birthday sake or a birthday party yes so we have a free birthday steak get a free birthday second dinner it's an it's an irresistible offer it's hard to say no to a free steak or a free salmon or vegetarian dish so we send out 300 400 postcards a month can we get back anywhere from 60 to 80. yeah and it brings them

in and and I keep numbers I I watch all my numbers and I know how many are coming in I feel like 112 dollars back per offer right yeah and but they love us they keep coming back and back and back them and sometimes it introduces new people because sometimes if a person moves it goes to the current resident at the house and we've actually gained

customers like I got this thing it wasn't for me but I didn't know you were here and I love your restaurant now right so bingo so what is your irresistible offer going to be what are you going to offer your guests and um yeah so now can I tell them what I want to do in our garden no why not no questions so muscles muscles are

a great food cost item right what are muscles cost 250 a pound um from there people charge like 14 bucks 15 bucks 16 bucks even more for a pound of mussels or 12 13 bucks for not even not even not even giving you not even a pound half a pound yeah so it's a great Money Maker so I'm like okay two dollars and fifty cents um

what does five pounds gonna cost five pounds is gonna cost 15 bucks less than 15 bucks with the sauce um let's pair it up with a bottle of wine and a salad and put five pounds of pot mussels in a big pot and charge 75 bucks for it like if that was us we'd be all over that we probably there was a restaurant that said five

pounds of mussels you get some grilled bread with it you get a salad and a bottle of wine for 75 bucks I don't care what the wine is I I would go there and say okay I'm gonna like the one can I upgrade can I right can I can I upgrade and you and I would drink the first bottle and then we'd buy more glasses that's

just what we do so but that I think that an offer like that it's a money maker it gets people in the door and you can offer it in off-peak times or what my thought process is it's going to keep people occupied for an hour right very low maintenance so what I think we need to do I think we should try it and do it on

a Sunday and do this is our muscle event in the garden muscles in a bottle of wine and a salad for fifty dollars and let's see how it goes 75 and let's see how it goes whatever price we're going to put actually put a pencil that's what I think we need to do we need to book that and see how many reservations we get yeah let's

irresistible make it where they want to come to you you can even open up on us on a closed night and do something simple like that that's irresistible like we're not opening a full kitchen a lot of restaurants do this now they have an extra night that they're open well it's Grandma night tonight it's whatever um Chef's night office night off or the kitchen's night off

so we went to a place one time where they allowed you to bring food in from another restaurant because the bar was open the bar was open bring food in eat here but you're drinking here yeah like right like you can't do it you can't yeah like how great was that we love that that one we went back to the place the following year and they

were closer maybe the shipment think outside the box and you have to think big and you have to think how are we getting people here so I think that's what we're gonna try I think we're gonna do a one Sunday in the garden do a charcuterie board um one week do muscles one week and let's see how it goes think big think big think big think

big get them in your door make it make them make them out to you opposed to going somewhere else Alex tremozzi make the offer so irresistible they can't say no yep that's it absolutely all right that's all right for more great tips on how to run a restaurant or love your restaurant go to restaurantgrowthsecretsuniversity.com we have tons of videos over there content lots of video content

and we have the most comprehensive online training system accountability system for restaurants um all that pricing's over there it's an amazing system it's what we use I just uploaded 60 more videos so you can train your staff and uh more than 60 70 videos it's it's and then and you can upload your own videos it's a whole great thing we'll talk about team training in another

episode and that's it folks of time that's the Time episode number 23 love passion and hustle great day thank you