It does not matter if you are running a small diner, a high end restaurant for fine dining or a drinks bar that serves some food or snacks, before a customer can purchase from you, they have to know what you are selling. Traditionally, there were two ways of achieving this end:-
- The staff would memorize your menu (be it food or drinks or both).
- You would print out or write the menu down and hand copies to each customer (or leave a menu on every table).
The Spoken Menu
This can add a personal touch to your establishment but it has some drawbacks. One being how far can you depend on your staff’s memories and the other can happen if your menu comprises more than a few items. While a serving person is reciting the menu to one customer, they have to ignore another customer who has just arrived. Additionally, the customer may have forgotten the earlier items by the time the server gets to the end of the list.
The Written Menu
This avoids the pitfalls of the spoken menu and should work just fine but for one thing. What if you regularly change your menu items – daily specials for example? Even a handwritten menu costs something to provide and you certainly will need more than one copy since you do want customers queuing up simply to read your menu. A regular printed menu backed up with a daily chalk board menu could solve this for you.
The Traditional Chalk Board
If your place has a traditional, simplistic theme to its décor, the chalk board will fit in just fine but could be out of place in a super modern themed establishment. Also, it is essential that someone on your staff can write legibly with chalk and in a size that can be easily read at a small distance.
Maybe You Need To Combine And Upgrade?
Why not keep your printed menus for the staple items and replace the chalk board with strategically placed Lighted Menu Boards which, these days, are not expensive and can be easily programmed to allow you to make changes whenever you wish. If you run a sports bar, you can even use Lighted Menu Boards to display the listing of fixtures that your TV’s will be showing today. Lighted Menu Boards might not suit a swanky fine dining restaurant but can definitely be used to advantage in many other establishments.
