Tasteful change: How to communicate restaurant menu and service changes to customers

You know your customers—and they know your business. From dining hours to each seasonal menu, they count on your establishment to cook up the cuisine they love.

Until you need to make menu changes.

Where’s the Southwestern chicken burger with fries? What happened to that fish taco early bird special your regular Friday seniors have been raving about to all their friends?

A new menu can be daunting to people who appreciate consistency—especially with our world in so much turmoil. And if you’re going to make service changes as well, be prepared for some pushback.

However, there are specific steps you can implement to make restaurant changes more palatable to your patrons.

Step 1: Be customer-centric from the start

If you know menu changes and/or service changes need to happen, make sure your most loyal customers—and staff—are part of the journey:

• Customer Feedback. You can conduct formal customer surveys or simply convene a roundtable—perhaps with beverages and dessert provided to encourage participation. Ask the key questions necessary to implement menu and service changes and listen closely to the responses. Take note of the top five most popular foods and drinks customers order. You might choose to make these items even more attractive on your new menu if they’re profitable for you, by offering a free drink refill with each meal, for example.
• Employee Feedback. Ask your team members for suggestions about what you should change. You may be surprised by their insights. They might tell you that half your paper menus have to be tossed each day because they’re stained. If this is the case, consider laminating the menus. Instant cost savings, and simple to do.
• Profit and Loss Driven Changes. Some menu items may become too costly to continue serving without a price adjustment. For example, a Consumer Reports analysis found that organic produce typically costs at least 20 percent more than non-organic produce. However, there’s a silver lining: just a few pesticides concentrated in a handful of foods pose the largest risk. The foods you may want to replace on your menu include conventional green beans, bell peppers, blueberries, strawberries and potatoes. While the switch to organics may go unnoticed by most of your customers, it will likely affect how many dishes offer these items, or the cost of the menu selections.
• Changing Business Strategy. You may need to make service changes or menu changes based on your business goals. So you might decide to focus on lunch service and close for several evenings during the week. For this change, you’ll probably want to produce a special lunch menu, where the prices will be lower than typical evening fare and will hopefully attract as many or more customers than dinner service on those days.
• Insights From Industry Groups. Look beyond your restaurant to find out what other companies in your industry are doing. Check with organizations such as the National Restaurant Association for tips and surveys about consumer behavior. Reports such as the State of the Restaurant Industry 2025 will tell you what’s trending with consumers and help you come up with ideas for new menu items. One reassuring finding: “Many restaurant customers—including 64% of full-service customers and 47% of limited-service customers—say their dining experience is more important than the price of the meal.” So perhaps raising prices a bit will be acceptable to customers—as long as the service remains stellar!

Step 2: Plan menu and service updates

Service changes can involve anything from a change in layout, which may affect the number of customers you can serve per evening, to your dining hours or new health and safety measures.

Changes in health and safety can actually be a boon for business, especially with ongoing Covid. For example, if you’ve decided to increase the frequency of your restaurant cleaning, make sure your customers know it. Recent research indicates 78 percent of diners “believe cleanliness is the most important factor when choosing a restaurant.”

Announcing menu changes can be as simple as stating, “Welcome to the fall menu.” On the other hand, if you’re making a larger change such as reducing the number of items on your menu, you might want to explain those changes in more detail. If there are small menu price increases, a simple statement like, “We’ve updated our prices” is one way to communicate this change. If you’ve decided to reduce the pesticide-heavy foods noted above, you could say, “Now made with organic ingredients!” You can also use a menu update as an opportunity to announce deals such as, “Early bird free beverage with dinner for 2” or “combo deals” to boost customer attention and retention.

Step 3: Communicate menu and service changes to customers, employees, and suppliers

Once you’ve defined your service changes and menu changes, communicate these changes clearly. To improve restaurant communications, start with your employees, since they need to be able to answer questions from customers. Explain how these changes will help your restaurant serve customers more effectively. If you decided to change menu prices significantly, highlight that fact, since your regular patrons will be surprised.

How you communicate service announcements affects how your customers will receive the changes. For instance, if you decide to stay open until midnight on Friday and Saturday, update your restaurant’s signage. If your hours are printed on your menu, you will need to create new menus—which would be an optimal time to laminate them. Be sure to update your hours of service on your website, and post updates on your social media pages. Finally, change your business phone voicemail message to reflect your new hours of operation, and how this benefits customers: “We’re now open till midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Come enjoy a late supper after the show!”

What about new customers? To connect with them, update your Google Business Listing with your new hours of operation and other service changes.

Also, check your restaurant listings on Yelp and local business directories, and update these as necessary. Today, most people check out any new product, service, or business online first. Speaking of which, be sure to announce your changes on Instagram, complete with images. You don’t have an Insta account? Create one now!

Step 4: Improve customer loyalty with delivery services

In an era where home delivery is paramount, implement a few surprises for your regular customers. For example: add a surprise dessert item for customers who order delivery more than once in 30 days. Next, include a card thanking them for supporting a local small business. These measures will go a long way toward reassuring customers that you appreciate their business.

You can also use menu price changes as a marketing opportunity. For example, announce that your new menu will take effect in 30 days, and invite customers to order now to take advantage of current pricing.

Make menu and service changes part of your business plan.

As a small business, you have the ability to make changes quickly. Use this flexibility and speed wisely. If you have a special menu for an upcoming holiday, print it and post it quickly. If you cut back on hours to take on catering during the season, announce those changes.

By regularly updating your menu selection and pricing, you can improve your profits. After all, your restaurant expenses like wages and produce keep increasing, so your menu and services should also change to keep up.

Ooma can be one of your best business partners in facilitating smooth restaurant changes and daily operations. We offer a phone system for restaurants with over 100 advanced business phone features to help your eatery run professionally—including a virtual receptionist that can even post menu options in different languages.

Bon appétit!