Menus are advertisements.  Effectively designed menus “sell” food for their restaurants in many different ways. (you can read further on this in one of our previous blog posts What Makes a Restaurant Menu Design Effective?)  As we all know however, ads can be misleading. Advertisers will use all sorts of tricks to persuade someone to buy, sneaking in strategically ambiguous words, which have multiple or vague meanings.  Some examples would be phrases like “affordable housing”  “decent income” or “large city” which, depending on who you are, is all relative.  Another little trick is sneaking in euphemisms, which is when you replace a common sounding word with a better sounding word; such as calling the bathroom a “powder room” or extra large sizes “women’s sizes.”  This is the area in which it seems some restaurants pull out all the stops, using  vague phrases such as “world famous” “Garden Fresh” and “Homemade”  An article from the Tribune dining staff discusses all of these overused phases and more. Read this article then let us know of any more annoying menu phrases that you think should be banned.

9 Phrases to Ban From Restaurant Menus

Menus are not the only place with ambiguous phrases, restaurants put them in taglines and logos too! Here are a few examples:

Illustration by Justin Rodriguez

WordPress is possibly the cheapest and best optimized Content Management System out there today.  WordPress and search engine optimization (SEO) guru,  Joost de Valk of yoast.com. says, “Out of the box, WordPress is a pretty well optimized system, and does a far better job at allowing every single page to be indexed than any other CMS I have used.” WordPress comes ready for search engines with several built in search engine optimization tools including the ability to use .htaccess to create static URLs called permalinks, blogrolling, and pinging (“Search Engine Optimization for WordPress,” WordPress.org). It also comes with various built-in feeds and allows your site to be viewed by various feed readers. There are even different third party plugins for WordPress that allow users to further optimize and customize sites to satisfy their needs.

Joost de Valk, shares the potential of WordPress SEO in his article The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for Your Blog. The article also has a corresponding hour-long video presentation for those who are more visual learners and listeners. The video and article serve as great resources for newbies who are just learning WordPress and SEO and also for more experienced users who want to know how to further optimize their blogs. In his article and video de Valk lists essential plugins that add optimization for WordPress sites, as well as template tips and ten steps to improve the conversation on your blog.

Some useful plugins he mentions are:

• Headspace2: Helps edit titles for better optimization

• Redirection: Helps manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and basically tidy up any loose ends your site may have. It is helpful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

• YARPP: Allows search engines to crawl through related posts.

• SEO Friendly Images: Provides proper alt and title tags automatically to images.

• RSS Footer: This is a simple plugin that lets you add an extra line of content to articles in your feed defaulting to “Post from: ” and then a link back to your blog, with your blog’s name as it’s anchor text.

• Yoast Breadcrumbs: Allows you to add breadcrumbs to your theme. Check out why breadcrumbs are useful in site navigation from our previous blog.

• Robots Meta: Allows you to easily prevent indexing of your search result pages, while still allowing search engines to follow the links on them, plus much more.

• Pagination: Allows you to use page numbers instead of next and previous links. With this plugin, users can easily navigate much quicker to the page they want. It is good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well, because it creates a tighter inner link structure.

A couple of his plugins are only available by signing up for his mailing list so check out his site to find the full article, video presentation, as well as his list of plugins.

de Valk, Joost. “WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for Your Blog.” 2009. Yoast. 7 July 2009 <http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/>.

“Search Optimization for WordPress.” Codex. 2009. WordPress.org. 7 July 2009. < http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_Wordpress>.

Is Burger King’s new ad for their “Super seven incher” a  risky business decision or just another step down from their creepy “king” mascot ads? While linking sex with food is not exactly a ground-breaking  technique in the advertising industry these days, this is no subtle sexual innuendo.   Albeit Quiznos has their “toasty torpedo” commercials and even McDonalds has a commercial or two that imply subtle sexual connotation. However, both have been able to maintain a somewhat  “classy” (for a fast-food restaurant) and “family friendly” image.  BK can throw those dreams out the window, if they ever had them in the first place. Let’s just say I won’t be taking my baby sister out for a seven incher from BK anytime soon!

At first glance of the ad I immediately thought “great design aesthetics with shocking and cheap humor.” Upon further analysis, you begin to think “what a revolting way to advertise an already nasty looking sandwich!”  Aside from the obvious controversial content, there are a couple initial problems with the ad.  First of all, who is the target audience? You really never know these days, but I highly doubt anyone, male or female will want to sink their teeth into a sandwich (complete with mayonnaise)  displayed as a phallic symbol.  Which brings me to the next problem – it doesn’t make you hungry for food! (or sex for that matter)

One things certain, the ad has caught the public’s attention and has gotten people to talk about Burger King.  The image is already circulating flickr and twitter.  Which brings us full circle to the initial question: Is this BK ad a risky business move that could potentially result in success?  Or does it spell out doom and destruction to BK’s failing advertising campaign by crossing the line in an already vulgar society? Let us know what you think!

A restaurant menu is a huge part of the restaurant’s brand identity.  It reflects who you are in the market.  Menus should be viewed as an investment for a restaurant owner, not as a cost because a menu design or redesign can improve sales if designed correctly.

Customers need guidance when trying to decide what they want to order off a menu.  That is why the placement of menu items, pictures/graphics and item descriptions plays an important role when designing a menu.

The inside right page of a menu is considered to be a high profile spot for a menu.  This is where it’s recommended that you place high end specialties.  It is recommended that you change up the font a little to make this section stand out more than the rest of the menu.

Menu item position affect sales.  It’s known that people/consumers tend to remember the top two items on a list as well as the bottom item.  This is a good location to place most profitable items.

Draw attention to specific areas of the menu. The font type, as well as font size, borders, boxes, symbols and shading all help to draw attention to specific items.  Just remember to not over do it.

Menus should not describe common or familiar items. Some items just don’t need to be described.  If something special or unusual is being offered, there should be a description for that item.

Don’t align prices on a menu, this causes the customer to look at the price of the item to determine what they will order.  If you put the price at the end of the description in the same type without dollar signs, this will allow the customer to focus on the item rather than just the price of the item.

Proofread!!! Proofreading is very important.  Spelling errors and typos are things that can cause customers to not take you seriously.

To see the full menu used above click here.