Culinary Currents
March 2005

Is Your Menu and Restaurant a Victim of Veto Vote?

By Peter Langlois

Menu developers generally do a great job of catching the latest trend and updating menus. Whether it was Atkins, South Beach or Lo-Carb, it appeared that every menu sooner or later was flashing those trends during 2004. Friday’s, for example, rolled out Atkins big-time. Now we’re backing off diet crazes and offering a reasonable approach to a healthy life style.

As I work with people on their menus, I advise them of the importance of balancing the menu to avoid what I call the Veto Vote. If you have a specialty restaurant that features great steaks or great seafood, for example, it’s mandatory that you balance it out with equally-as-good menu selections using pork, chicken, lamb, fruits, vegetables and so on. What we can’t afford is to lose a six-top or eight-top because we aren’t offering alternatives to our specialties.

A great example of this approach is the highest–volume independent steakhouse in Texas, Taste of Texas, located in Houston. While playing up their hand-cut prime steaks, they’ve done a brilliant job of featuring a salad bar that frankly out-salads concepts, which claim to be salad bar restaurants. I was talking with one of their waiters (a student of mine), and he was expressing his dismay that an ever-greater number of his customers were simply going the salad bar route, eschewing steaks. I told him he just didn’t get it.

The fact that the restaurant had such alternatives meant that those customers who loved steaks would not be voted down when they suggested Taste of Texas for lunch or dinner. We simply don’t know when our restaurants are shot down because we don’t offer enough variety to have a broad appeal. Now I’m suggesting that you look into each category on your menu, such as appetizers, soups and desserts to insure you have healthy alternatives in each. Furthermore, these can’t be just throw-in items. Developing high-quality tasty selections is just as critical here as in the entrees. I’d never steer you away from having a specialty theme personified by your food selections. But I would suggest a broad approach to avoid that Veto Vote.