By Published On: April 20, 2020

If there are two things we love here at d.trio it’s marketing and food (not necessarily in that order). So when we found an interesting article about how restaurant menus are designed to affect the food choices people make, our ears—and stomachs—perked right up.

As marketers, we know all too well that there’s serious science behind people’s decisions. After all, marketing is the science (and art) of influencing decision making for the sake of selling a product or service. And so, being the ever-curious people we are, we were fascinated to learn how the process works when it comes to ordering off a restaurant menu.

Turns out, our food choices are based on a lot more than just appetite, taste, and price. Menus are sophisticated marketing tools that can have a strong influence on the decisions we make. (In fact, there’s a whole industry known as “menu engineering.”) Sure, we’ve all seen the bold or boxed text that highlights the featured dishes on a menu. But according to the article, there are many more subtle-yet-equally-deliberate tactics as well—all carefully cooked up to steer you one way or another. Things like a menu’s weight, the characteristics of its fonts, and the specific choice of adjectives used in the descriptions.

Hungry to learn more? You can find the full article here.

About the Author: Mark Zukor

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