At most restaurants, menu descriptions are a dull list of ingredients. An honest description adheres to a collection of best practices, and you don’t should be a writer to learn from them. When written well, descriptions convey the soul of your restaurant and result in higher profits.

A very big problem I see with most restaurants is that they describe their menu items with a full list of ingredients. This is often unfortunate because menu descriptions allow you to share the guts and soul of your restaurant with customers and might have a defining impact on a restaurant’s reputation and profits. They really are that important. specifically, they will positively impact your restaurant in the following ways:

1. Menu descriptions let a restaurant make unique itself
Strong menu descriptions take a dish out of the realm of being a commodity and make it appear better than an identical dish being sold by a competitor across the road. A decent description won’t catch up on bad food, of course, but when customers believe that you simply are offering something distinctive, something that they can’t get anywhere else, your restaurant reaps the advantages through increased traffic and guests’ perception that the dish’s price is more justified.

2. Good menu descriptions entice guests, resulting in repeat business
When tempting language makes three entrees seem irresistible, customers will order one in all of them and possibly return two more times to undertake the opposite two on future visits.

3. Good menu descriptions make customers order more items
Customers typically spend just 90 seconds looking over the menu, and this point doesn’t expand to accommodate any confusion caused by a poorly written menu. Good descriptions require less work (e.g., reading, searching) from the customer, and some confusion or searching during the item-selection process means customers have a length within those 90 seconds to seek out and add additional items to their order.

Now that you just know the importance of how you present your restaurant’s offerings to the globe, I’ll teach you ways to explain them to your customers. All of the knowledge I present applies to all or any forms of food establishments, from high-end restaurants to hotdog stands to food trucks. And note that it’s important to regulate the language you employ to fit your particular audience. While reading, please detain mind that every piece of data below addresses one or more of the three positive impacts listed above: it differentiates your dish, entices your customers to order your dish, and/or makes it easier for patrons to seek out and order more of what they need.