One of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a food business owner is failing to realize the importance of seemingly small tasks such as to print pizza menus for takeout, for example. Why focus on your to go menu when you have dine-in options available? Here’s a quick list of the reasons:
- You are losing a huge percentage of potential customers if you don’t offer to go or delivery services. This is especially true when it comes to easy-to-eat food items like pizza or Chinese takeout. People love the convenience of ordering meals which are cheap, delicious, and fast. If you don’t tap into this market, you are not making the most out of your earning potential as a food business.
- Since you don’t have to prepare the food item for dine-in serving, wash dishes, and clean a table, to go customers will save you a lot of time and manpower. You will also earn more profit because you can add more to the price since customers are willing to pay for convenience.
Marketing Tips for Print to go Menus
Next, what are the marketing tips that you need to live by when you print carry out menus? First, focus on the design and content of your menu. If you’re running a pizzeria, for example, limit your takeout options to just seven flavors – any less and customers will feel short changed, while having too many items to choose from will make them feel overwhelmed and unable to make a choice.
Design-wise, make sure that there is a good balance between text and images. If you must include pictures or hand-drawn illustrations, make sure that they look appetizing and eye-catching. For the text, you can include a short description of each pizza flavor, for instance, and make sure that the menu is not crowded with too much information.
Second, look for distribution options that will reach out to a broader audience. After printing a set of to go menus, you can place them:
- Inside every to go order or delivery order.
- In a prominent place just right outside your restaurant, so that customers won’t have to come inside just to see what you have to offer as a food business.
- Inside direct mailers – where you can include postcards, discount coupons, or business cards to complete your print marketing materials.
If you’re holding a promotion, you can also have an employee distribute the menus in areas where there are a lot of people passing by.
By paying attention to the design and distribution of your to go menus, you can make this powerful marketing material work to your business’ full advantage.