Off-trade drink sales have outperformed on-trade sales. More people drink at home than in bars or clubs. So it’s more important than ever to seize the chance with your drinks menu.
Don’t underestimate the value of your drinks menu. 90% of guests will check the drink menu before placing an order. They spend only 109 seconds on average choosing their drink, so make sure your high margin products stand out and get the most attention. The decision on which items to highlight is ultimately up to your brand and commercial plan, but effective drinks menu design may pay rewards by improving the guest experience while also driving higher expenditure per head.
1) Make it easy
Understanding what customers desire from their drinking experience in the first place can give you valuable insights into how to arrange the drinks menu navigation and classification. If your business is all about discovering new and uncommon drinks like artisan beers, wines or cocktails, you may think differently than a pub that understands that its customers are more budget conscious and want to remain longer. Including a beverages directory to focus on a specific category will help your brand’s positioning. For example, O’Neills revamped their brand with an emphasis on Irish-American provenance, making whiskies and bourbons the primary focus of their drinks menu, with messaging centred on lineage, taste, and distillation procedures, giving them a distinct area to control.
When educating a guest about new flavours, you may want to use descriptive headers to group the various selections. Using sensory words to describe the drink, such as crisp, earthy, and fragrant, will assist a guest in qualifying their drink selection, especially when photography is not available.
There are 4 types of descriptors: geographic (Sicilian lemons), nostalgic (Grandma’s apple pie), sensory (creamy, spicy) and brand names (e.g, Tanqueray gin). Country of origin is also something customers will look for and have an opinion about. The more information you can give will allow your guests to trade up for an alternative.
2) Photography is key
Inspire guests by using beautiful photography that showcases the drinks you most want to sell. We know people are often more likely to buy cocktails because of the way they look and the experience they provide, rather than a list of botanicals that they may not be able to imagine the taste of.
Our experience tells us that drinks featured in photography outsell any other in a standard listing. Remember the 109 second rule? If you have an abundant menu, you don’t have very long to grab attention and up-sell from the standard coke or lime and soda. That said we also know brands that have come a cropper because whilst everyone wanted to sample the hero front cover drink, it was operationally more tricky to make, so customer experience was being let down by long wait times (and resulted in a menu reprint half way through the cycle to manage demand). Choose well however, and a hero spread in a well-designed menu can help increase the popularity of your recommended drinks by 25% and contribute to overall uplift in LFL by 30%.
3) Don’t overlook the soft option
More than half of all food opportunities include a soft drink. Take into consideration breakfast and lunch as well as dinner, and consider whether your drinks menu properly serves all of these occasions. Soft drinks are no longer just for drivers or under 18s. With alcohol moderation a rapidly growing social trend, the category is becoming more and more innovative, with no or lo-alcohol cocktails regularly part of the menu and new grown up softs like Thomas & Evans and even no-alcohol spirits like Seedlip or Stryyk growing in popularity. The challenge to brand-owners is how to present these alternatives in their point of sale. The menu navigation needs to be carefully considered and we are seeing softs gradually take more real-estate, with profit opportunities mirroring this. Sales uplift driven through considered menu design can contribute up to 5% more revenue for your business overall.
Sources: CGA Peach, Britvic, Clarity client anecdotal evidence and performance figures.
Contact us to find out more and how we can elevate the performance of your menu.
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