What are the best strategies to promote high-margin menu items online and offline?

1 Use menu engineering

Menu engineering is the art and science of designing your menu to influence your customers' choices and encourage them to order your high-margin items. You can use various techniques, such as highlighting, positioning, pricing, and wording, to make your high-margin items stand out and appeal to your customers' emotions, preferences, and expectations. For example, you can use descriptive names, attractive photos, or icons to draw attention to your high-margin items, or place them in the prime spots of your menu, such as the top right corner or the center.

2 Leverage social media

Social media is a powerful tool to showcase your high-margin menu items and generate interest and demand among your online audience. You can use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok to post mouthwatering photos or videos of your high-margin items, along with catchy captions, hashtags, and calls to action. You can also encourage your customers to share their experiences and reviews of your high-margin items on social media, or run contests and giveaways to reward them for their engagement. Additionally, you can collaborate with influencers or bloggers who have a large and loyal following in your niche and ask them to feature your high-margin items on their channels.

3 Train your staff

Your staff are your best ambassadors for your high-margin menu items, as they interact directly with your customers and can influence their decisions. You should train your staff to know your menu inside out, especially your high-margin items, and be able to explain their features, benefits, and ingredients in a persuasive and enthusiastic way. You should also teach your staff how to upsell and cross-sell your high-margin items, by suggesting them as add-ons, complements, or alternatives to other dishes, or by creating bundles or packages that offer value and convenience.

4 Create scarcity and urgency

Another effective strategy to promote your high-margin menu items is to create a sense of scarcity and urgency among your customers, by making them feel that they might miss out on a limited or exclusive opportunity. You can do this by offering your high-margin items as specials, seasonal, or limited-time offers, or by creating a waiting list or a reservation system for them. You can also use countdown timers, banners, or pop-ups on your website or social media to highlight the availability and popularity of your high-margin items and create a fear of missing out.

5 Collect feedback and testimonials

One of the best ways to build trust and credibility for your high-margin menu items is to collect feedback and testimonials from your satisfied customers and showcase them on your website, social media, or other channels. You can use tools like surveys, polls, or online reviews to gather feedback and ratings from your customers, or ask them to share their stories, photos, or videos of their experience with your high-margin items. You can also use testimonials as social proof to show how your high-margin items have solved a problem, fulfilled a need, or satisfied a desire for your customers.

6 Test and optimize

Finally, you should always test and optimize your strategies to promote your high-margin menu items, by measuring their results and making adjustments accordingly. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or other analytics platforms to track and analyze the performance of your online and offline campaigns, such as the traffic, conversions, sales, and revenue generated by your high-margin items. You can also use tools like A/B testing, split testing, or multivariate testing to compare different versions of your menu, website, social media posts, or ads, and see which ones perform better for your high-margin items.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?