UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, JAMAICA

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND LIBERAL STUDIES

SCHOOL OF TECHNICAL & VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

FOOD PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION FON2001

Descriptive menu

This is usually a list of all the ingredients that are used to prepare the dish. Ideally, this
should be short, explaining what the dish is, and, ultimately, making the customer want to order
it. Menu descriptions sell your food and is often what helps customers determine what dish to
order.

Tips When Writing Descriptions for Menus

1. Keep descriptions short

Refrain from using a long restaurant description with fancy wording.. Instead, keep your menu
descriptions short – people don’t have long attention spans.

A food description needs to:

● Be vivid

● Entice consumers

You want to use powerful menu description words that allow you to make a person's mouth
water while not being too long. Take some time, write a first version and then revise trying to
make it shorter while still maintaining the impact you want to make with your description.

2. Consider your audience

You know your audience better than anyone – or you should. When you're learning how to write
a restaurant menu, you’ll focus a lot on wording and ideas. But you also need to figure out how
to describe food on a menu in a way that resonates with consumers.

Sit down and gather information about your audience, including their:
 ● Gender

● Age

It is important to know the gender and age because each dictates how to write your menu.
Knowing the words to use comes from gender. For example, men tend to want to focus on the
hardiness of a dish and the size of the portion provided. Women, on the other hand, want to know
the finer details, such as the taste to the aroma.

You also have to keep in mind the different dietary trends of your audience. If your audience is
vegan or prefers gluten-free meals, be sure to highlight this on your menu. The goal is to make
these key items stand out to your main consumers.

3. Focus on the person’s senses

Taste and smell are two of the most important senses to focus on when writing a description of
good food. Restaurant description words should incorporate sensory words that include but are
certainly not limited to:

● Spicy
● Crispy
● Savory

● Creamy

You can describe the dish in great detail, such as “covered in a spicy tomato sauce with a hint of
basil and a touch of butter.” Studies have been done on restaurant menu descriptions and the use
of descriptive labels when writing menu items. Sales increased by 25% when the owner learned
how to write to describe food. If you neglect to focus on your menu, you’re cutting down your
potential sales and revenue.

For any owner, it makes sense to focus on and ignite the five senses.

4. Design the menu properly

You can present a fabulous dish and spend time learning how to write a menu card, but restaurant
menu writing will not help you overcome poor design. If your menu’s design is lacking, it’s
going to push customers away and may stop them from reading further. Think of your menu as
an extension of your brand.
You want to impress with your card design. To achieve this:

● Organize the categories

● Keep full menu reading time to 110 seconds or less

● Allow for easy skimming with large headers

● Use special graphics to focus on specialty items and deals

● Utilize boxes, bold text and colors to bring attention to certain food items

If you want to use real-life menu and food description examples, go to your favorite restaurants
and snap a photo of the menu. Find food that you find appealing so that you can use them as
inspiration when creating your own.

5. Don't forget best practices in pricing

You can look at dozens of menu item descriptions and never pay attention to the pricing. A lot of
owners just slap a price somewhere close to the description of a meal and never give it a second
thought. But consumers will also use pricing when trying to sift through the different items.
Great design must include smart placement.

A few simple and easy methods that will allow you to add prices to your restaurant menu
descriptions are:

● Display pricing on the left or right side (stay consistent)

● Align prices using left or right justification so that the dollar sign lines up

But there’s a problem with these methods: it allows consumers to price shop. If your goal is to
get consumers to read every menu item description, place pricing right after the description. Use
a dot or dash to connect the description and price to flow neatly into each other.

You can choose either method of pricing, but if you have certain high-priced items that
consumers aren’t buying, you may want to avoid the first method of pricing placement discussed.

Creative wording and focusing on food adjectives for menus are not enough to make your menu
“pop.” Using the tips outlined above will help you make more sales, describe food in a way that
tantalizes the taste buds and increases customer satisfaction when they order a dish.
6. Focus on three main parts of the dish

When you look at a menu description, you’ll have to focus on three main parts of the menu:

1. Title

2. Ingredients

3. Description

Your title always comes first and needs to state the name clearly. You’ll want to make the title
bold and larger in size than the description text. Now, you need to determine if you want to add
in the description or ingredients first.

Restaurants often use either order for their menu, but in either case, be sure to follow the same
order throughout the menu. Sometimes, and it’s up to you, it’s acceptable to change this order
after every certain number of items.

This should be done if you have a very long menu to break up the monotony of the items.

When writing a menu, be sure to focus on the descriptions of the food that you’re selling. Make
the title stand out, highlight the key ingredients in the dish and be as descriptive as possible when
writing your menu.

The time spent on writing can build customer loyalty and increase sales.

As your menu grows, be sure to revisit your descriptions and prune any dishes that aren’t selling
well. If you focus on your items, you’ll have a much happier customer base that’s excited to try
out new dishes simply because your description will help them envision the food even before it
reaches the table.
 Reference

https://mcdonaldpaper.com/blog/how-to-write-great-menu-descriptions