 Culinary Development
Quantified Marketing Group’s Director
of Culinary Development, Leslie Lynn explains why the culinary
development process is a crucial step for any restaurant and how QMG
helps its clients develop and revitalize menu offerings.
Hands down, the most important element of any great restaurant is the
culinary experience it delivers to its guests. Whether your guests are
trying new and exotic tastes or coming back for old favorites, it’s
your restaurant’s food that makes the experience memorable. Your
brand, and its promise, should come shining through your menu items and
your success in accomplishing that will be the defining difference
between you and your competition.
Appealing to the Senses
Creating a menu of carefully selected, relevant and inviting items that
speak your brand ensures that your guests not only experience your
unique differences through what they see but also through what they
taste. Avoid the temptation to be all things to all guests. If a menu
item isn’t consistent with the personality of your restaurant, leave it
off. Your guests are counting on you to deliver a dining experience
that is authentic and connected to who you say you are as a concept.
Don’t disappoint them.
Currently, one of QMG’s clients, Mel’s Diner, a Southwest Florida
restaurant chain, is looking to upgrade the dining experience they
deliver by evolving their menu towards a more gourmet dining
experience. The restaurant’s makeover, which will also include all new
design elements, will be brought home by new menu items in development
such as Millionaires Southern Fried Chicken featuring a whole fried
Cornish game hen served with Yukon mashed potatoes and fresh seasonal
sautéed vegetables.
Entrees such as these put the gourmet spin on traditional comfort food
so guests can get a real taste of gourmet while maintaining elements of
the traditional “diner” experience.
Complimentary Meal
One of the hallmarks of a great menu is the successful “story telling”
of the brand through the names and descriptions of its items. Guests
are on the lookout for items that reflect familiar favorites prepared
and presented in new and exciting ways. Featuring the unique
aspects of your concept through creative and clever names and
descriptions is your gateway into the hearts and taste buds of your
guests.
Miami Beach’s afterglo restaurant is pioneering a culinary concept
called “beauty cuisine.” Packed with enzymes, minerals, and
antioxidants, afterglo’s dishes are designed to beautify the
body. Each of afterglo’s menu items reflects this philosophy with
descriptive names like “A Beautiful Mind” salad and the “Yin/Yang”
cream cheese tart dessert.
Remember, your guests will spend only an average of two minutes with
your menu so the names, description and layout of your menu are vitally
important. The organization of menu items, the typeface and color
palette do not only convey your restaurant’s image, but can also be
strategically geared towards increasing profits.
Think of each slot on your menu as real estate and only place items in
high profile areas that will “talk the talk” and “walk the walk,”
meaning they will not only reinforce your brand promise but deliver
profitability as well.
The Signature Dish
There is no better way to gain a strong foothold in a defined theme
than through signature dishes and drinks. These items are the
original creations of your restaurant and establish defining
differences between you and other restaurants in your category.
Own a dish and you obsolete your competition in that menu category. You
want your guests to say, “When I want a steak I only go to……” As we
like to say at QMG, don’t be the best at what you do, be the only one
who does what you do!
QMG recently helped Po’ Boys Creole Café roll out a new menu category
that accomplished just that. By creating a customized burger
category that included The Mud Bug Burger, topped with fried crawfish
and The Bayou Burger, topped with smoked cheese, beer-battered onion
rings and a spicy barbeque sauce, they were instantly set apart
from their competition and their New Orleans/Voodoo- themed ambiance
and distinctive offbeat personality was decidedly reinforced.
Drink Up
A savvy beverage menu will boost sales and create unique niches that
will be hard to duplicate by your competitors. The repackaging of
successful traditional favorites through creative naming and
distinctive glassware can be combined with several “signature
cocktails” of your own creation to create a unique offering.
Successful beverage programs offer breadth through expansion of wine
lists, beer choices, cordials, signature drinks, coffee and tea
service, and non-alcoholic specialty drinks.
QMG develops world class beverage menus that enhance the guest
experience, drive home the personality of the brand and contribute
significantly to the bottom line. These beverage menus are then
promoted and merchandized through specialty drink table menus,
featuring eye-catching images and entertaining names and
descriptions.
Identify the Trends
Every menu should be in a constant state of evolution. It’s one of the
most effective avenues to keeping your brand fresh and relevant.
Keeping on top of current and emerging trends is a vital component to
menu mix management. Determining what’s hot and what’s not is easy.
Figuring out what trends will endure the test of time and produce for
you is the hard part.
Avoid the temptation to heavily invest your menu real estate in quickly
emerging food fads. Test items through specials or black boarding to
measure your how well your guests will respond. This will save you from
incurring costs associated with obsolete inventories and menu
reprinting. And remember, it may be the hottest culinary trend out
there but if it doesn’t pull its weight in brand reinforcement and
profitability it is not only useless to you but could very well hurt
you.
QMG’s culinary department emphasizes research to not only identify
present trends and predict future trends but also to evaluate their
staying power. When developing menus for clients, extensive
research is conducted into category overviews and competitive analysis.
If a new brand is being created from scratch, focus groups are
sometimes conducted to gauge consumer response. If it is an
existing brand undergoing a renovation, extensive menu mix and
profitability analysis is performed to facilitate decisions on what
will stay and what will be replaced or improved.
All the while, QMG’s expert team keeps an eye on operational impacts,
procurement and supply chain considerations and potential economies of
scale. The results are cutting edge, well-balanced, operationally
friendly and profitable menus that speak the brand and reinforce its
one-of-a-kind attributes.
Kitchen Experiment
Developing menu items soon transitions from research and ideation to
the nuts and bolts process of developing cost effective recipes and
exacting flavor profiles.
QMG’s culinary development department offers its clients the unique
opportunity to “test drive” menu items and recipes in a live kitchen
environment. The talented culinary team brings the knowledge and
expertise necessary to develop inspiring dishes while considering the
demands placed on your restaurant’s kitchen. QMG’s “in-house”
culinary team will fine tune each recipe to ensure speed, quality,
consistency, cost control, and ultimately to inspire delight in the
hearts and on the palates of your guests.
Results from the test kitchen are then assembled into recipe manuals
for the restaurants operations staff. Complete with cooking
instructions, yields, and color photographs of the finished products,
the manuals provide consistency of taste, presentation and cost control.
Good Impressions
Once your menu is complete with appealing recipes that embody your
restaurant’s brand, the best way to showcase them is through alluring
plate ware, service ware, flatware, and glassware. It is important that
the presentation you choose for your dishes enhance their unique
characteristics not overpower them.
Fancy doesn’t always cut it. Sometimes plain and simple plates do a
better job of letting the food speak for itself. Plates that are too
large will make your portions look measly while plates that are too
small may make the guest feel overwhelmed or make the dish hard to eat.
Try different food arrangements and be mindful of how sauces will run
to protect the flavor of accompanying items.
If patterned plate ware is desired, make sure its design is relevant
and complimentary. Make sure your garnishments are appropriate in size
and shape and are super fresh. There is nothing more unappetizing than
a wilted piece of parsley thrown on a plate just for the sake of it.
Garnishes should enhance the dish by adding color, texture and that all
important “fresh cue”.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Your restaurant can be elegant, hip, creative, fun or offbeat but if it
can’t deliver the promise of your brand through its food, your concept
will fall flat and soon become stagnant and irrelevant. Creating great
menus is a process of blending creative force with analytical
principles. In essence, it is finding the perfect balance between art
and science.
Let QMG’s Culinary Development department prove its leadership in
forward-thinking, cutting edge menu development and culinary services
by capturing your brand and bringing it home to each guest through each
of their senses, especially their taste buds!
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