The journey of any restaurateur consists of many menu ideas, creations that are ultimately fails and wins from a business or taste perspective. Even a person starting out in the restaurant industry for the first time experiences a taste of what this is like at a smaller scale.
Managing where and how you store your menu information is critical, something that may not be considered usable this season may be the answer next season and bring in tons of happy customers and profits for your business.
Restaurateurs, fast food operators, coffee shop operators, food trucks and chef’s throughout their career should realise the importance of building your history of menu ideas and creations in one central place.
Recently we met a well renowned chef who is also the food ambassador for his region. We had the pleasure of sitting down together and discussing his career milestones and the important work he has provided to businesses over the years.
One thing that he noted was the regret of not keeping all the menu items he conjured during this time. He went on to mention that he had 1,000’s of menu items and 100’s of menus he developed and forgot the recipes.
When we asked how he stored his menus and items he mentioned everything from ideas to actual menus were written down in notebooks or stored on word documents that disappeared or were left behind overtime.
Imagine being able to look back at menus you have created and which menu items were big wins, and which weren't. Certain platforms like Menuzen allow you to store items in your account without physically showing them on a menu along with including basic recipe management. Making it the perfect cloud storage platform for hosting your menu information.
From busy self employed baristas to chef’s and seasoned restaurateurs, whether you need to publicly display menus online or simply store personal menu ideas for future use Menuzen is the solution for you.
Storing menu ideas when they hit.
When planning that new location, opening an additional store or planning a seasonal menu, jotting down menu ideas throughout your day or week is something that is a must as a chef or restaurant owner.
What you can output on your menu matches seasonal produce and inventory can be a challenge while ensuring you have a marketable and tasty end result.
Inspiration and trial and error is key to making this happen and knowing that your menu is so much more than a list of the food your business offers to customers.
These menu item ideas are full of opportunities for optimization and growth within your restaurant, cafe, bar, or food truck. This basically means that your menu could always be working a little harder to help you achieve your business goals.
Storing items down on your phone, laptop or notepad is the go to for most, but in 2022 there are tools that allow you to record this information, attach pricing ideas, set as a draft and come back later to perfect.
Why it is important to build menus with live data.
When adding your menu items into Canva, spreadsheets or word documents it is important to realise this information or data as we call it is flat, it's not considered live and updatable.
This means that you cannot take this data and use it elsewhere very easily or if you share the design, you can't make updates that reflect instantly against that design.
This is similar to products like Canva that allow you to create quality menus within their platform via drag and drop tools and text selectors. The menu output is great from a visual perspective but management ongoing of your items and their pricing becomes an extreme pain point and challenge for business owners.
Here is a simple example, you create a menu and a design on your word menu template, you show your team, get approvals from chefs then deploy across your social media and website.
The next day you get a message saying there is a pricing error on the menu and it needs to be redone - you now have to stop what you are doing and put everything aside, navigate through all social media channels and websites taking down your menu to make one change and reupload again.
This process is time consuming and unnecessary and can completely be resolved when using a cloud based Menu Management System like Menuzen.
You have the ability to make pricing and item updates on the go anywhere that reflect instantly no matter where the menu is in the world. It could be on someone's mobile phone or email inbox and once you hit that update button your menu is updated in an instant.
This also means that if your item is attached on multiple different Menuzen menus it will update live as per your updates saving you huge amounts of time and apologies to your team and customers.
Our conclusion?
With tools like Canva and Microsoft Word menu templates that allow you to produce amazing menus fast they seem like the go to platform for anyone creating a menu but when you begin to add the time spent on updates, price changes and limitations of where and how your menu can be shared with your audience a platform like Menuzen outweighs both Word and Canva.
Menuzen as a tool allows you to simply add menu items, structure menus, publish and share anywhere online. This live data solution is perfect for professionals on the go that want the reliability and accessibility of Canva but with live updateable menu information.
Never lose menu ideas or inspiration again. Store them in Menuzen and access them anywhere, anytime.
