This is Part 1 of a three-part series on the most overlooked profit lever in food and beverage: the menu. Part 1 focuses on using menu design to improve profit margin. Part 2 will dive into how to build a menu that tells a story guests want to buy into. Part 3 will look at how choice architecture and guest behavior impact menu design. 

Menus are food and beverage’s secret sauce. They shape behavior, set pace, and move more dollars on the P&L than any other system in the building. But most are only pulling a portion of the load they could be. Too often, they are treated like seasonal paperwork. Reviewed, updated, debated, printed, laminated, and left to age. Maybe there’s a seasonal facelift. Maybe a price bump. Then they sit. Not lifting. Not steering. Just existing.

Meanwhile, 3 to 7 points of margin are hiding in plain sight, which adds up. 

A good menu communicates brand, supports service execution, and sets the tone for the entire guest experience. It informs, educates, persuades, and entertains. Sometimes it even covers for what is not working elsewhere.

It is also the first line of defense in protecting margin and your best ally in driving sales. It is a powerful and multifunctional tool. The trick is to learn how to utilize every tool within the tool. 

Leak vs. Lift

Menus are never neutral. They are either working for you or working against you. The leaks usually start quiet. A high-margin item gets skipped because it is hard to find. An add-on never sells because it is boxed into a blind spot. A prep-heavy favorite ties up the line but barely moves the needle. Modifiers confuse more than they convert.

None of it triggers alarms. Most of it never shows up in the reports. But the drag is real, and it hits every shift. That’s why each menu listing needs to be viewed and managed as a lever to improve traction or slammed down to avoid slack and lost profitability.

Margins often come from how a product is positioned on the menu, not necessarily the product itself. Consider the following table. Same food cost. Same price. Same prep. Three very different outcomes.

Example: Turkey Club 

Nothing changed in the kitchen. The lift came from the menu layout and framing, and a nudge from the service team. 

This is where most menus fall short. The food is dialed in, but the strategy for how it’s presented gets left behind. Stop treating the menu like an art project. It is a business tool that belongs in the same conversations as labor strategy and pricing decisions, not buried under branding and print specs.

Where the Eye Lands

Guests don’t read menus. They visually graze them. Ten, maybe 15 seconds is all the attention most menus get before a decision starts to form. If the layout doesn’t guide that scan, guests default to what feels easy—whatever jumps out first, sounds familiar, or avoids asking a server for clarification or translation. 

For example, at one mid-sized ski resort in their all-day café, a $15 grilled chicken sandwich was outselling a $26 signature burger 2-to-1. The burger had stronger guest feedback and a better margin, but it was buried in the midsection of the menu with no formatting. The chicken sandwich led the list, boxed in, and flagged as a “guest favorite.” After swapping positions and giving the burger a proper visual anchor, sales shifted fast.

These same layout principles apply even in cafeteria and scramble-style setups. Whether it’s a printed sheet, chalkboard, or digital screen, it’s still a guest-facing menu that drives behavior. Featuring a high-margin item, calling out a signature pick, or giving visual weight to a “guest/staff favorite” can steer decisions without any staff interaction. 

Menu real estate is strategy. It’s about control and curb appeal. Layout sets the tone and steers behavior, lifting margin without any actual physical reworking of the dishes.

How to put layout to work:

Start each section with a proven margin driver

Use white space to create pauses and cues

Group items by how guests choose, not how kitchens fire

Isolate modifiers and add-ons to increase visibility and spend

Words that Sell

Guests respond to language long before they respond to flavor. Get the words on the menu right, and you create value before the orders are even placed. Get them wrong, and everything on the page flattens into a commodity.

The copy on too many menus reads like a packing slip: Chicken Sandwich; Grilled Fish; House Salad.

Good copy can anchor price, trigger nostalgia, and nudge spend—all in six words or less.

“Chili-glazed” makes salmon feel intentional and ‘culinary’

“Snow Day French Toast” is setting appropriate

“Trailhead Chili Bowl” creates a sense of place

For example, at one casual full-service restaurant in a high-volume village, a flatbread went from forgettable to top five in sales—no recipe change, no upsell—just a rename. “Mozzarella with Basil and Tomato” became “Campfire Caprese.” The vibe sold it. Not the ingredients.

Good copy isn’t poetry. It’s positioning. It nudges the guest into a decision and helps them feel good about making it. 

The Sharpie Test

Most menus don’t need a redesign. They need a black marker reckoning.

Before pulling reports or running algorithms, print out the menu. Mark it up. Write down what you know, what you think, what you’re hearing from the team, and what makes common sense at a glance. The crowd favorites. The constant comps. The visually unappealing. The dishes that are impossible to carry. The items that are easy to execute and the ones that tie up the line.

Then bring in the sales mix. Highlight your top sellers and circle anything running a 65 percent margin or better. Wherever those two overlap, that’s your starting lineup.

That’s the play. Edit what’s there. Reframe what already works. Make the lineup easier to sell, easier to run, and easier to say yes to. That focus delivers common, repeatable margin boosts from simple menu edits—no capital required.     

One clear example: a cafe had 42 items on the menu. Eleven of them were doing all the work. The rest were slowing down prep, cluttering the line, and tying up inventory dollars. Once the cafe cleaned house and featured the proven performers more prominently on the menu, the check average climbed more than two dollars. That adds up over time, and it didn’t require physically changing what is offered. 

When Menus Bloat

Big menus drain systems. They slow prep, strain labor, and add unnecessary ingredients that don’t move. Guests get confused. Staff lose clarity and care. Kitchens clog. Line flow stalls. Ticket times stretch. Allowing this to occur isn’t happenstance; it’s costly negligence.

Here’s how performance trends positively when the lineup is dialed in:

The Blind Spot on the P&L

Most operators know what their top-selling items are. They just haven’t looked at whether those same items are getting any support on the physical menu. It doesn’t require a deep dive to examine this—just step back and ask if the menu is set up to help the guest say yes to the most profitable things.

Most menus weren’t built that way. They evolved. Things got added. Sections got shuffled. Layouts got repurposed. Strategy took a backseat to spacing and aesthetics. But the fix isn’t complicated.

Bring the layout into alignment with what’s driving sales and margin. Use formatting to highlight, isolate, and reinforce your best performers. Treat the menu like a working system.

Once that happens, the menu starts doing its job again. Not just looking good, but actively influencing the quarterly P&L by driving top-line sales, showing up in guest feedback, and boosting NPS.