Prix Fixe Menus – Attracting more Lunch and Early Dinner Diners
Prix Fixe is French for “fixed price” and having a Prix Fixe menu available at your location means offering a dinner at a set price for your customers. These menus usually consist of two pricing options for 2 or 3 courses, with at least two or three options available for each course. Prix Fixe menus are quality, value for money options that ensure streamlined speed of service for your guests on a time crunch, and can be excellent options for lunchtime business meet ups, casual lunchtime diners as well as those looking to get an early dinner before attending a show or an event.
Should I Consider a Prix Fixe Menu?
If you’re in a location where you get a lot of workforce lunchtime traffic then time is of the essence to these customers. Offering a Prix Fixe menu ensures them that they can eat a good, high quality meal in the time provided to them for lunch. This peace of mind will mean that they’ll be able to relax and enjoy their meal and their lunch break even more.
If you’re located near a theatre, concert venue, sports venue, or anywhere else that is a draw to potential customers during the early evening then offering a Prix Fixe menu could work very well for your business. These people, like the workforce on lunch break, have a time by which they need to leave and be in another place. Your Prix Fixe menu can facilitate this with ease and peace of mind.
What to Include on a Prix Fixe Menu
Items on a Prix Fixe menu are always fast service. So these items usually require the least amount of cooking time at the moment of service; they are also simple to plate. This doesn’t mean that the dishes themselves need to be simple and easy, indeed you can take as much time preparing them before service as you wish. As is discussed below, this is a good moment to show off a little bit because you may be introducing new customers to your location with your Prix Fixe menu.
Introducing New Customers to Your Restaurant
The attractive pricing of three courses on your Prix Fixe menu means that people who haven’t been to your restaurant before might be drawn in by it. You will, obviously, receive return customers who know and love your food and your brand but a Prix Fixe menu allows people to sample what you have to offer without going all out. This is why speed and quality of service are paramount, as well the quality of the food on offer. This is your chance to showcase what you can produce from your kitchen and highlight what your food and your brand represent.
Easy Food Cost Management
Once the popularity of your Prix Fixe menu is established and you have a good level of traffic for your Prix Fixe menu, you can use this to help you control your food costs and, more specifically, food wastage. Items from your main menu that aren’t selling well can be incorporated into dishes on your Prix Fixe menu in order to move them and prevent them going to waste. Just make sure that you’re not copying the full menu item because eagle eyed customers will spot it.
Remember that dishes on your Prix Fixe menu are going to be considerably smaller than those on your main menu and this accommodates the lower prices on the Prix Fixe menu and pricing these out correctly to ensure cost effectiveness is of high importance. Prix Fixe menus can bring many benefits to your location, notably helping you put people in seats in the notoriously quite early dinner period of the day. The benefits of introducing new customer to your location and helping you manage food costs are also both excellent reasons to consider having a Prix Fixe menu.
