Today I want to talk about how to make your menu your friend in your marketing.

I’ve talked before about sustainability and one of those items was the amount that goes into landfill. Why is that important?

Because not only are we filling it up as a planet, but it is also a cost to you. You’ve had the cost of preparing that item, you’ve had the cost of buying it in and it’s going to landfill, so you’ve also got the cost of getting that taken away by your waste management company, whether that be your Council or private contractor.

So how can you turn it your menu into a marketing tool?

The first thing is, think about what you’re doing.

If you do a carvery on a Sunday, why not make Monday a curry night. You can turn all that leftover meat into curries, if you’ve got loads of leftover veg peelings or veg why not turn that into soups. You can freeze soup so you might you’re making it in the autumn, not quite cold and but you’ve got it there ready for when it gets colder and you want soup on your menu.

The other thing is, think of portions.

Do you need all those big portions? It might be that during the week, you’ve got older population coming in, retired people that want a meal but they don’t want the massive plate say a 30 year old or 18 year old would want.

So why not think about on your menu, offering to various menu choices sizes of the dishes. It might be that you no longer do it as an all in one dish, you offer vegetables at a separate price. Sort of things like that.

You know your market, why not test it?

Printing menus now is really cheap or you can just do it on blackboards, but it’s a good thing to experiment to find out what works in your market.

Remember monitor what comes back, monitor all that food waste because that is going to cost you money.

If you can reduce that and change it into saleable product and it sells then that is great.

It is really easy, just think of alternative uses of it or different ways of storing it. Make sure you keep that stock rotation correct, because that’s another way you can lose food and it cost you to take it away to landfill.