Ordinami.itBetween "Spaghetti with clams" and "Spaghetti extruded through a bronze die with genuine clams, sweet garlic, and fresh parsley" lies the same recipe but a different perceived value, and often a different price that the customer accepts without hesitation. Writing menu descriptions is a sales job disguised as a writing task. Here's how to do it without being ridiculous.
The structure of a description that works
A good description fits in one or two lines and answers three questions: what's inside, how it's prepared, and what makes it yours. Main ingredients, technique or cooking method, distinctive detail: "Creamed cod with toasted polenta croutons, just like in the lagoon". That's it. Beyond two lines, it becomes literature, and the customer stops reading.
The words that really sell
- Origin: the Piennolo tomato, the Tropea onion, the Bronte pistachio. The origin justifies the price more than any adjective.
- Technique: cooked at low temperature, creamed, smoked in-house. It tells a story of work, and work is paid for.
- Senses: crunchy, creamy, warm. Words that describe texture make you hungrier than those that describe taste.
- People: Grandma Ida's recipe, the bread from the neighboring bakery. Use them sparingly, but it works.
The words to cut
Beware of adjectives that prove nothing: delicious, tasty, mouthwatering, flavorful. If every dish is "a true explosion of flavors", none of them are. Also, avoid winking ellipses and random capital letters. And be careful with verifiable promises: "homemade" and "freshly made" - only write them if they're true, because today's customer asks and checks.
Also, keep an eye on the overall length of the menu: if every entry has four lines, the descriptions cancel each other out, and none of them work. Keep it to two lines for the dishes you're focusing on and one short line for the simple ones: hierarchy is also built this way, giving more words to what you want to sell more. And if a dish really deserves a long story, assign it to the wait staff, not the text.
Before and after, to make it clear
- Before: Beef striploin with arugula and parmesan. After: Piedmontese striploin cooked rare, wild arugula, and 24-month parmesan shavings.
- Before: House tiramisu. After: Tiramisu assembled on the spot, ladyfingers soaked in stovetop coffee, and fresh mascarpone.
The advantage of rewriting them digitally
On paper, rewriting descriptions means reprinting; on a digital menu, you can correct them whenever you want and fix them one category at a time. If you're about to create your digital menu, it's the perfect time for this task, since you'll need to recopy each entry anyway. With Ordinami, you also get your menu in multiple languages: a well-written description in your language becomes a description that sells in English, German, and more. Start with the ten dishes that give you the most margin: those are the lines that bring in the most, as soon as your menu is online.