Communicating your Brand through your Menu

One of the first considerations when planning your menu is how you are going communicate your brand.

Your brand is:

• Your mission and purpose – why do we exist?
• What are our values – the beliefs that drive our company.
• Our personality – if your brand was a person what type of personality would it have?
• How do you differ from you’re your competitors?
• If your brand was a person, how would it communicate? You have to understand who you are and why you exist before you can determine the best way to communicate your brand…from your menu, to the service, from the music to the culture.

What is a brand identity?

Brand identity is the impression in the consumers’ mind of a brand’s total personality (real and imaginary qualities and shortcomings). Brand image is developed over time through marketing campaigns with a consistent theme and is authenticated through the consumers’ direct experience. Most companies decide on what that brand image should be and then work hard to communicate the brand image to the customer.

Activity: look at the following picture with some of the world most famous food brands, take a couple of them and explain our impression of them, why do you think you have this impression?

What does the following menu tell you about their brand?

Activity

Please look online at menus of a few restaurants in your area. How and what do they communicate about their brand?

Discussion

When you did your menu research, what were some of the things that you picked up about the restaurants and how they conveyed their brand?

Leave your findings in the comments section below.