Menu Printing 101: How to Direct Mail Your Menus to Customers

By means of direct mail, you can boost your business within a very small span of time. Menu mailing can increase your sales, miraculously, overnight if you do it correctly and target the right homes, apartments, and businesses. So how do you do it? Read on…

First, you need to design an excellent menu for your restaurant that is designed to generate massive response rates. This means no black and white menus, home-made copies, or boring templates. Instead, hire an experienced printing company that offers in-house design services and direct mail marketing programs. It is in your printing company’s interest to make your campaign as successful as possible so that you print and mail more often. It’s a win-win situation if your Menu Mailers are a smash hit with customers!

Add in one or more “calls to action” and make sure that your offers, coupons, and specials provide “something for everyone.” For example, $2 Off Any Foot-long Sub might sound great, but if the customer doesn’t want to eat a sub – they have no reason to call.

Keep In Mind the 5 Most Important Types of Customers:

• Families. Ordering for 3 or more people, looking for value, convenience.
• Couples. Ordering for 2 people, looking for value, appeal, comfort.
• Single. Ordering for 1 person, looking for speed, convenience, low hassle.
• Parties. Ordering for 5 or more people, looking for “all inclusive” packages.
• Business/Lunch. Ordering for 2 or more people, looking for speed, variety.

With this strategy in mind, you will need work closely with your menu designer to produce a full-color menus “engineered” to increase your sales and average ticket size. Here are the basic ideas that you must incorporate into your design to maximize your sales of high profit items:

• Include mouth-watering food photographs of only the items you most prefer to sell
• Use “Best Seller” stars next to your most popular and most profitable items
• Use clear, easy-to-find category headers such as Appetizers, Salads, Pizza, Pasta, etc
• List prices without “dollar signs” to shift focus off of price and onto food
• Use a photo of your store front on the cover of the menu so customers will recognize it
• Encourage sales of starters, entrees, and beverages to maximize your order size
• Highlight your benefits – fresh local ingredients, low prices, family-owned, etc

Once your menu design is complete you need to create a Menu Mailer distribution plan. Initially, target all homes, apartments, and businesses within your selected delivery areas. Keep in mind to use a “radius mailing” strategy which means that every potential customer within a circular one, two, or three mile radius of your restaurant will receive your menus.

Don’t be afraid to ask your design/printing/mailing company with assistance on the distribution plan. Rely on experienced professionals who have worked with hundreds of other restaurants. By following these tips and strategies, your Menu Mailers will generate massive cash flow, literally overnight!