Hello Street food business owners, how does you menu look? Have you tried looking up other food shops to see how their menus are presented? If you are new to the industry, your menus will be pardoned. But as you get older in the game, you’d be judged for every of your displays. Do you change your menus according to the seasons, annually or are they just always the same? If you leave them the same way through all the seasons, they better be good or you will be criticized by the people who visit your shop.

Whether your menu is great or not, we would like to show you why you should revise your menu from time to time. One of the reasons is that human beings are attracted to change, to new ways of doing things. So if you touch up your menu, you will raise a few eyebrows, but of course they will be pleased with what you have invented. Another reason is the food trends on the market. When there is a new food trend, you will have to update your menu to suit the trend. This will reassure your customers that you are up to date with the times. Your creativity as a chef and a food entrepreneur also comes into play here. Updating the menu could also mean a bit of creativity on your part. So do it so long as it comes out beautifully done. Your new menu could also be a beginning to a season of massive sales. You never know what will trigger your sales until something does. This means you have to do what you have to do. Moreover, updating the menu has a lot to do with attracting customers during the offseason. We mentioned how it is important to keep working even during your offseason in our last post.  We do hope that you read it and learn why off seasons are equally important in your business.

We will make a list of the reasons you should consider updating your menu.

Change always attracts people.

Be mindful of food trends.

Just do it: it could unlock your closet of fortune.

Flaunt your creativity.

Do the underground job in the off season.

Now let’s get down to expanding on each of these points.

Change always attracts people.

Have you asked yourself what people want from your shop, why they trickle in every other time? It is your presentation and your customer relationship skills and the taste of your food. It could be so many other things too. People are attracted to good things, especially things that tilt to their favour. When you touch up your menu, most people will be pleased with your new additions and with the mere newness that radiates from your menu. However, if there is a favourite meal at your shop, the one that almost everybody clamours for, you must leave it intact, the way it served, the name, the taste, everything.  This is because it is bad business to alter a well liked meal at your shop. This meal could be the reason you have great sales. Tampering with it could mean a bad season for your shop. So don’t go messing with people’s favourites until their loyalty shifts to another meal. Now, wheeling back to our point, people always get excited about new meals and always discuss about going to try them out. So make sure your new menu is the bang, and then wait and see.

Be mindful of food trends.

Trends are great to engage in especially when they give a lift to your business. There is something that trends all the time, either on social media or in real life. It could be sports, or dance, or fashion, or other kinds of extra activities. It could also be food. This is where you come in. When a particular meal is trending, everyone talks about it and this is the ideal time to adjust your menu and plant it in. People who have heard about this food will be glad to eat at your shop, and they will inform other people about you. So it is important that you make these meals well as you will be receiving many first timers.

Just do it: It could unlock your closet of fortune.

There are no hard and fast rules about creating or updating your menu at your street food shop. So you can try whatever you feel like trying out. You never know what will work out. You can try out flavours and see what strikes as unforgettable taste. Then you put it up on your menu. You never really know what could catapult you to high levels in your cooking career. The great meals we have today were started up by a chef somewhere. You could be that chef too.

Do the underground job in the off season.

During the off season, it is important to make your menu more attractive to food lovers. We discussed this in a recent post. During the off season, food sales are usually low. Some shops even close up because of the weather. This period is equally the best time to think of how things can be better at your shop. Try to invent new things all around your business, your menu especially. You could come up with a new kind of burger or pie. This could mean changing the shapes or using a different recipe to create something unique. You have no idea how many people that could flood your shop because of that single treat. People love to try new meals. So you can also update your menu according to the events and festivals around the corner. You can create Thanksgiving specials, for example, or you could create a meal to honour a Memorial Day or a day like Worlds Earth day, etc. You could invent Friday specials too, and have this meal up on the menu only on Fridays. These strategies could build in some magic for you in your shop, dear street food business owner.

We wish you the best in the coming weeks.

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