How To Increase Check Average With Better Menu Strategy

Henry Kaminski Jr.: What's shaking everybody? Welcome to another Brand to Table podcast episode. I'm your host, Henry Kaminski Jr.

, your go-to for restaurant marketing and branding. And today we're talking about menus. is so hidden revenue sitting inside of your menus. We got to talk about it.

And I've getting my ass handed to me, And they tell me all the time, Henry, you don't talk enough about these little tools that you've created. So I want to share with you the tool I created probably over a year ago. I've been tooling with it. and it over the last six, seven months, if you will.

But I've brought it to the podcast and I never really shared it with anybody but my clients or ⁓ that me about ⁓ So when I rebranding, I said, how I stand out from all the other marketers in the northern New Jersey area? And one of the things that kept coming up was Henry, you are pretty savvy with digital marketing. You're pretty savvy with tech. pretty savvy with AI, specifically GPT.

Like how can you leverage all of that and create different for owners to play with? And I think I was a little too early to the game because I think a year ago restaurant owners weren't too savvy on chat, GPT. Now I see them using it a bit more, not as much as I think that they should, but I think now time has passed and they've gotten their feet wet with it. They're a little bit more willing to try things.

So one of the things that I've created with chat GPT are called custom GPTs. And this is where I geek out and I get a little techy. So I don't want to you with all of this stuff, but what I can do is create a very specific chat GPT to help me solve a very specific. problem.

So my clients were complaining a lot about, you know, just menus in general, how to optimize my menu, how to design my menu properly, how to price things properly, how do I increase check average with the menu items that I have. I took all of that feedback and said, all right, why don't I create a custom Chat GPT Let me call it a menu design and profitability analyzer, do all my nerdy shit and come up with something that restaurant owners could literally upload their menu and this tool will help them optimize it, whether it be pricing, whether it be layout, whether it be just figuring out ways to generate more revenue with the menu itself.

So want to give you a little behind the scenes slash demo of how this thing works. I want to preface this by saying when you try this tool on your stuff, because I'm going to give you a code to get to it. I'm not charging for this. So I'm going to give you a keyword after this episode.

And all you have to do is come to Instagram and DM me the word "MENU" and I'll send it to you. And again, I'm not charging you for this. I want you to try it out for yourself because it's going to help you. I promise you.

I've seen the drastic changes my clients have seen by using this tool. So the one thing I do want to preface is make sure that you have a chat GPT account and that you're logged into it because it's kind of clunky if you do if you're not logged into your chat GPT account. You don't need a paid account or anything like that. You just got to be logged into your chat GPT account.

It's just going to be smoother access to the tool. All right, so let's get into this, right? So I'm going to share screen real quick ⁓ you how this bad boy works. So.

⁓ You can see here, this is the menu design and profitability analyzer. And I set up a couple of prompts already for you to all you have to do is literally just click on them and go from there. So the one is, you know, can you review my menu and suggest improvements? The other one is I want to increase my check average size.

Can you help me? The other one is, is my menu helping or hurting my restaurant sales? And then the last one is how can I make my menu more profitable without crazy discounts? And so we could go through all of them or we can go through a couple depending on how time is working with us today because I do have a call in about 45 minutes.

So I want to keep this short and sweet. The other thing I want to say is this particular episode, you're probably going to want to watch this on YouTube because it is kind of visual, but I'll kind of walk you through it verbally in case you guys are listening on Spotify or iTunes or any of those audio platforms. So we're going to upload one of my clients. So what we'll do is we'll just click here like can you review my menu and suggest improvement?

So it's going to do its thing and it's going to prompt me to upload a menu. So I have it right here on my desktop. I'm going to go to new menu. and it's uploaded the PDF.

I'll just give you a quick look at it. So it's a couple pages long and it's got your apps, you know, your your entrees, you know, the whole shebang. Right. So this is the dinner menu.

So we're going to close that up and I'm just going to write here you go. I'm going to let it do its let it do its thing. So I'm not gonna read this word by word, but I'll go slow. But you could see that it's already pinpointed some quick wins that we can do to upgrade this menu and just help it increase revenue, but also help the menu ⁓ I should say help the guests digest it and order from it more seamlessly.

it also, so it gives some suggestions here. Create a chef's favorites or Stonewater signatures section. So that's kind of a box out if you know what I'm Strongest candidates that tells you what you should put in that section and tells you why you should do this to the menu. Fix the steak add-on strategy and it tells you why.

And then it also talks about the formatting. So it analyzed the actual design of the menu. It noticed that the formatting was inconsistent. So it's saying, get more consistent with your formatting.

And it tells you how to do it. Tighten up the descriptions. Give cocktails more selling power. And it literally lays this all out for you.

And then at the end, it tells you, you know, my highest impact recommendation. All right, so you can continue to conversate with it. So we could say, this is great. Thank you.

Now can you help me increase my check average? now that you know. based on these. recommendations.

Let's see what it says. Absolutely. We're talking revenue strategy here. So now it goes even deeper into how you can optimize this.

So turn steak add-ons into a surf and turf upgrade, add the perfect pairings, create a premium for two experience. That's a really cool idea. Using cocktail timing to increase beverage attachment. So this is going deep into your menu and really helping you take it to the next level.

So let's add, let's ask one more question, you know, from what you can see. is my menu helping my sales or hindering them. So it's pretty positive. It's helping sales because the food, the price points, the premium ingredients, a higher check average, but the way it's organized is also hindering sales.

So it goes into where it's helping and where it's hindering. And then it gives you my honest read. Now, where is Chat GPT getting all this information? Well, this is where I uploaded 16 plus years experience in the restaurant industry.

and gave it some very clear directions on how to analyze these menus. So that's sort of the secret sauce that nobody else can really touch here, which makes it very, different from regular chat GPT. Because I'm sure you could probably do this in regular chat GPT too, but it's not going to give you my insights. And that's the big differentiator here.

And that's what makes this so unique. So it basically now has summarized what the big, big, big changes should be and how you should go about doing them. ⁓ you have it guys. Like this is what I'm talking about when it comes to working smarter inside your restaurant and leveraging the tools that you have inside of chat GPT and inside of your restaurant that you probably don't know even exist until You know, somebody like me comes along and says, guys, we got some really amazing tools sitting right here under our nose.

We just got to use them or find somebody that can help you use them, right? So this is of many tools that I have creating behind the scenes. I have one for social media. I have one for content creation.

I have one for, let me see, I have a bunch here. Local influencer outreach. A lot of my clients are asking me, like, how do I properly reach out to influencers? How can I leverage influencers and maximize my partnerships with them?

Well, there's a tool for that. And have it. And so what I want you to do, if you want this menu design and profitability analyzer, just. show up in my Instagram DMs and type in the word menu you'll get the automation.

It'll get you right to the link here and you could start using it immediately. So let me know if this was helpful guys. Drop some comments below. Let me know after you use the tool, what you think could be better.

If there are any things that could improve it, let me know and share this episode with somebody in the industry that you think could benefit. from this super cool tool. So I'll catch you on the next episode, guys. Hope you enjoyed this one.

Peace.