Apt Menu Descriptions Drive Sales

The style, tone and other characteristics of menu descriptions—the psychology of menu item descriptions, if you will—can help foster increased sales. This can include recasting a particular food in a new language light (such as Danny Meyer’s recent stab at calling chicken livers “torpedoes”) or adding descriptive enhancements (like noting that the bacon in a particular item is “applewood smoked”). Brian Wansink, Ph.D., director, Food and Brand Lab, Cornell University and author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” notes that descriptive menu labels increased sales by as much as 27%.