How to write menu descriptions that sell without overclaiming

About this guide to menu descriptions

The short answer: how to write menu descriptions

A good menu description tells the guest what the dish is, what makes it worth choosing, and how it comes, in one or two lines. Lead with the main ingredient and the method, add one specific detail, and stop. Spend the words on the dishes that earn the most and sell the least, because that is where wording is the cheapest lever you have. Everything you claim has to be true.

Why descriptions are a profit decision, not a copywriting one

Two dishes can return very different cash and sell in the same numbers. The menu engineering matrix sorts every dish by that: stars sell and earn, plowhorses sell but earn little, puzzles earn well but sell little, and dogs do neither. A puzzle is a dish worth selling that guests are not choosing.

A puzzle has three possible causes: it is in the wrong place, nobody is recommending it, or the description does not make anyone want it. The first two are layout and service. The third is wording, and it costs nothing to test. That is why the words belong on a menu where they will move cash, not spread evenly across every line.

You can find your puzzles with the food cost calculator, which scores a dish on cash margin and gives its place on the matrix, or from your own sales mix report.

A four part method for a menu description

Most good descriptions have the same bones. Write each in this order and cut whatever the guest does not need.

1. What it is. The main ingredient, the cut or form, and how it is cooked. “Roast chicken supreme” says more than “Chicken”.
2. One distinguishing detail. The thing that makes this version worth having: a technique, a flavour, an accompaniment you are proud of. One, not three.
3. How it comes. What is on the plate beside it, so the price makes sense.
4. Provenance, only if it is true and it matters. A named producer or region that you can document. Leave it out if you cannot.

Dietary and allergen markers go in a separate, consistent place on the menu, not woven into the sentence.

Before and after

Four illustrative dishes, none of them from a client menu. The changes are the point, not the dishes.

Notice what did not happen. No adjective was added to a plain dish to make it sound better. Each rewrite gives the guest more information, not more volume. The “dry aged” and “hand cut” in the third row are only there because, in this example, they are true.

What to leave out

• Stacked adjectives. “Succulent, mouth-watering, delicious” asks the guest to take your word for it, and tells them nothing about the dish.
• Menu-speak the guest has to decode. If your server has to explain the word, it is not doing the job. A dish name nobody understands is a puzzle you made yourself.
• The story. A paragraph about the grandmother, the farm and the philosophy. A menu is read at a glance, and the story belongs on the website or in the server's mouth.
• The same sentence structure on every line. If every description reads the same way, none of them stands out.
• Words you cannot substantiate. See the next section.

Claims on a menu have to be true

A description is a statement about what the guest is buying. If the menu says home made, locally sourced, fresh, free range, dry aged, wild or line caught, that has to be accurate for the dish as served, on the day it is served. The words are not decoration, and a guest who finds out they are wrong stops believing the rest of the menu.

• Write from the specification, not from memory. The recipe spec says what goes in the dish and where it comes from. The description should be drawn from it, and updated when the spec or the supplier changes. This is the same discipline as costing, covered in the development sprint process.
• Dietary labels need to be reliable. Vegan, vegetarian and gluten free labels are promises, and the kitchen has to be able to keep them, including on cross contact. If you cannot, say so plainly.
• Allergen information has to be available for every dish, whatever the description says, and the rules differ for loose and prepacked food, as set out in the allergens guide. A shorter description is never a reason to leave it out.
• If in doubt, check. Your local authority's environmental health and trading standards teams can advise on a specific claim.

Where to spend the words

Describing every dish at the same length dilutes all of them. A better distribution follows the matrix:

• Puzzles get the most attention. High cash, low sales: the dish most likely to repay a better description.
• Stars get a clean description. They already sell, so protect them. Do not rewrite a star for the sake of it.
• Plowhorses need accuracy, not more words. They sell on familiarity. The lever on them is price or cost, not copy: see pricing a menu.
• Dogs may not deserve any. If a dish neither sells nor earns, the answer is usually to remove it, not to describe it harder.

The words and the floor

A description is a script for two readers: the guest and the server. If the menu says “dry aged sirloin, hand cut chips, peppercorn sauce”, the server should be able to say the same thing, and answer the next question. Brief the floor on the three dishes you most want to sell, in the words the menu uses. A recommendation from a server is also one of the most effective ways to lift the share of a puzzle, as covered in the guide to increasing restaurant sales.

Better wording on the dishes that earn the most is one of the cheapest ways to lift what each guest spends, which the spend per cover guide sets out in cash.

How to tell whether it worked

Treat a rewrite as a small test, not a launch.

1. Pick a few puzzles and leave the rest alone. Changing everything at once tells you nothing.
2. Record each dish's share of sales for a comparable period before the change. From your sales mix report, same days of the week.
3. Change the wording and nothing else. Not the price, the position or the section at the same time.
4. Compare the share over a similar period afterwards. Allow for seasonality, a weather swing or a promotion.
5. Keep what moved cash, and revert what did not.

This will not give you a percentage you can forecast with, and nothing on this page promises one. It tells you whether wording is a lever on your menu, which is the useful question.

A checklist before you print

• Every description leads with the main ingredient and the method.
• No more than one distinguishing detail per dish.
• No stacked adjectives and no words the server has to translate.
• Every claim checked against the spec and the supplier.
• Allergen information is available for every dish, and dietary labels are reliable.
• The most attention goes to the puzzles, the least to the dogs.
• The floor team can say it in one breath.

The rest of the page work, layout, position, section length, anchors, is in the menu engineering guide. If you would rather have the whole menu done, including a rewrite of every description to the same standard, that is part of a menu redesign.

Menu descriptions: FAQs

Keep reading. Wording does different jobs by section: starters, main courses and desserts. Any description that names an ingredient also has to be right on allergens and Natasha's Law.