Menu myth debunked
For years, textbooks and restaurant consultants have contended that menu item placement directly influenced how frequently customers chose certain dishes.
Not so, according to two independent studies by a pair of University of Missouri-Columbia hotel and restaurant management students in two Columbia restaurants.
“While it appears in textbooks, there are very few studies to validate this claim. Our study was to explore this relationship statistically,” said Ben Beckett, a sophomore from Cameron, Mo.
Beckett conducted his research at 63 Diner, 5801 Highway 763 N, which primarily serves hamburgers and sandwiches. Greg Stansberry, a senior from Columbia, did his study at Chris McD’s, 1400 Forum Blvd., an upscale, full-service restaurant.
The students rearranged the order of items on the menus but otherwise kept the original appearance of the menus the same.
Popular choices at 63 Diner were moved to the bottom of the menu. Puzzle items—dishes with a large profit margin but lower popularity—were placed at the top. Instead of hamburgers and cheeseburgers, Beckett put the smoked rib club and country-fried club sandwiches at the top of the menu. On the dinner menu, the popular country-fried chicken breast was replaced by the more profitable pepper chicken dish.
At Chris McD’s, Stansberry randomly rearranged every item on the restaurant’s menu. He also moved the starters category, which included appetizers, from the second place on the menu to the top, where soups and salads had been.
Customer item selections were recorded before and after menu treatments at both locations. A statistical analysis showed the switches made no difference in customer selections at either restaurant.
Changing the menu made no difference,” said Beckett. “People ordered what they wanted from the menu.”
“Everybody took for granted for 30 years that item placement on a menu made a difference,” said Julie Hosmer, MU hotel and restaurant management instructor. “In these studies, it did not. This contradicts the foundation of some basic industry design principles.”
The study was part of the MU Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Forum.
-MU News Bureau