Menu Makeover: Alter Your Menu Without Changing The Food You Serve

Having a well-developed and organized menu to represent your food can make a world of difference to your food truck’s success. Take a look at your food truck menu. Look at it as if you were seeing it for the first time. Does it make a statement that supports your food truck brand? If not, maybe it’s time for a menu makeover. Being critical of your menu may be difficult for some vendors. It’s very easy to point out mistakes of other food truck menus but hard to see the flaws in yours.

Clever marketing tricks can have new customers standing in line at your truck without spending a cent. Today we’ll discuss a few tips and tricks to give your business a menu makeover without changing the food your customers love.

Simple Food Truck Menu Makeover Tips

Emphasize Popular Items

Don’t be shy about giving your highest gross profit items in a prominent position when arranging your food truck menu, It’s good business to drive your customer’s attention towards menu items that cost you little to make, but will make you great profits.

You can split these out from the rest of your menu by highlighting them in a different font, boxing them together, or even in a separate list such as ‘Chef’s Favorites’. If nothing else, make sure they are featured at the top of your menu.

Review Menu Descriptions

A great menu with well thought out descriptions can literally make the customer’s mouths water in anticipation. If your food truck menu descriptions reach that goal, it becomes part of your brand and can help boost your revenues at the same time.

Using descriptive language is going to make your customer emotionally attached to the menu item. It will also give them more confident in their choice. A menu item that confuses customers is not going to do well. People don’t like to look stupid when asking what an ingredient is.

Create Meal Deals

Look at what menu items might lend themselves to a meal deal. If your main shift covers the lunch rush, why not advertise at the top of your menu a selection of specially-priced lunchtime meals that include a side and beverage? The best thing about meal deals is that it only needs to be a little bit cheaper ($1 or so) than if they bought all the items separately, and a great way to up-sell. People always feel as though they are getting a great deal if it’s advertised that way.

Update Costing

When it comes to a menu makeover, it is easy to get caught up in the creative and fun stuff. It’s exciting to brainstorm new menu descriptions and explore new flavor profiles. Just don’t forget that your truck exists to make a profit. So along with the fun stuff comes those things that sometimes operators hate; updating your food costs and pricing.

The Bottom Line

At the core of any food truck business is the menu. It’s what lures people to your service window and markets your mobile food business to prospective customers. From time to time, vendors need to re-examine their menus and determine if it needs a menu makeover.

Getting creative with a menu makeover is a quick, simple, and cost-effective way to breathe new life into food truck. Changing up menu items is just as important, but not a regular reality for vendors who need to stick to crowd favorites.

Have you recently given your food truck a menu makeover? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter