Your menu that you will have in your restaurant is determined by the type of customer market that you will serve. Specifically with each type of market, the manager, owner of the restaurant or the food services manager must determine the best type of menu that is suitable and preferred for the needs and desires of their specific food customer market. That is what the area, or drive around catchments area needs.

It’s not a chicken or egg scenario. If the area served has ten pizza restaurants but few hamburger chains, even if you like pizza, why put up another pizza restaurant menu?

In designing a given menu , that manager must not only consider information on the market itself – for example age , gender , economic and employment conditions , frequency of eating out etc , but also the skill levels of the employees in the area who will be hired, the availability of food products – both availability , quality and seasonal availabilities of given food ingredients. In the end it’s not only about the restaurant but also food type, quality and ultimately the profitability and longevity of the restaurant operation in question.

The type of menu to be offered and the pricing structure of the food service establishment of course are chosen and determined by management. However, with menus that change frequently it may that often the menu planning will fall into the responsibility of a chef in the case of a restaurant or a dietician in the case of a hospital or school cafeteria.

Meal planning can often be said to be among the more complex tasks of the whole food service chain a restaurant industry. There can be said to be a large number of variables – things that can and will change, often on their own. Needless to say it’s often the costs of the ingredients, or services that change. The cost of beef or chicken may vary from week to week, from month to month. Sometime it’s the absolute costs. Sometimes the products are on special or sale. Sometimes it’s seasonal. Sometimes it may be as simple that coke is on sale, yet bottled water is not. It’s ongoing to try to make sense of it all – to price consistently both in terms of product and your customer demand and yet not have customers feel that you are non –caring, or taking advantage of them.

Not only will that but a good restaurant manager keep his finger on the pulse of his customer’s preferences and his eye on the ball. Customer preferences can change. Once a customer base is lost it can take a great amount of time and effort to lure former customers back. Not only will you have the situation of reduced cash flow but as well you may have to charge less than the competition in order to get those customers back.

In the end it can be said that the restaurant and food business can be among the most personally rewarding forms of employment but also among the most demanding businesses to be involved with. It’s all about food and satisfying your customers.