June 21, 2019 • 27 mins
Hip decor and a clever name may bring people in, but a restaurant is nothing without a solid menu. In this episode, Marc with fellow restauranteur and chef Marcus Samuelsson (Red Rooster, MARCUS) take us through their menu creation process, explaining how they push boundaries with unfamiliar flavors and curate dishes for specific audiences. Marc also catches up with Gregg Rapp, a menu engineer(!), about how your favorite eatery’s menu might be psychologically manipulating you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Food three sixty with Mark Murphy is a production of
I Heart Radio. I want you to build little stories
on your menus so it's more interesting, and build some
personality into the menu. I always say, we don't really
the guest is really telling us that better be on
(00:23):
the menu. Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that
serves up some serious of food for thought. I'm your host,
Mark Murphy. Some of you may know me as a
chef and a New York restaurateur. Today's episode is all
about menus. Sure, a clever design in a cool looking
(00:44):
place is important, but a restaurant is nothing without a
solid menu. My guest Marcus Samuelson and Greg Rapp, who
you heard at the start of the show, both know
a thing or two about that. I sat down first
with Greg. He's been working in the menu engineering field
for the past thirty six years, and he has developed
his own tools and strategies to help more than a
(01:04):
thousand restaurants and hotels built successful and profitable menus. Greg,
thank you so much for joining me here. Thank you,
it's great to be here. My first question, when you
go out to eat and you see other restaurant menus,
what is the number one mistake people do. The biggest
mistake I see is when they put a price list
on the right side that will list all the prices,
(01:25):
so a guest will find the cheapest item and then
read the menu that way. What I would do on
a menu is put the description and then put a
period and then two spaces, and then put the price
in the same font. That way, if you're looking for
the cheapest item, you can find it, but you're not
gonna look at the menu for price. The other big
(01:47):
mistake I see on menus is dollar signs. I've been
taking those off menus for thirty seven years now. They
just remind people of money. So say you have a
hundred and fifty menu, items may have a hundred and
fifty dollar signs. If you remove those, it softens those prices.
Does that also count on wine menus as well. Wineless
are the worst menus there are because they just give
(02:08):
us the name of the wine and a price, and
so the restaurateur tasted hundreds of wines and only a
few wines end up on the list. A restaurateur should
explain why that wine is on the list and tell
the story behind it. That's what I love about iPad
menus is iPad menus. Now you can get as much
or as little information as you want. So how does
(02:29):
a menu influence what people are going to order? Well,
think about those restaurants in New York that you see
that have the sandwich name is just a person's name,
you know, in the delis and you have to read
all the ingredients to figure out what it is. So
when the menu is laid out with strange names and
it's not organized correctly, a person has to read the
(02:51):
whole menu and they will overwhelm. And when a person overwhelms,
they'll default to a menu item that is easy or
what they had last time tim or you know when
you go into these casual chain restaurants and they hand
you a huge pile of menus and books and bar
books and all of that, they go, I know this
place has a cheeseburger and a beer. Take all this
work away and bring me a cheeseburger and beer. But
(03:14):
if you organize the menu and a person can navigate
it and find items, if they can go through their
categories and they can go to a seafood section if
they're interested in seafood, or they can go away from
that seafood section if they aren't interested in seafood. And
like I say, the sooner a person finds what they want,
the more they'll typically order too, they'll order more. In
(03:37):
the pizza industry, if if they're putting the pizza together
on their own instead of ordering a signature pizza and
their arm wrestling with their whole family on what goes
on the pizza today, they're not going to order as
many salads or as many breadsticks. So the sooner we
can help them order a signature pizza, the more they'll
typically order. So how you describe a dish is important.
(03:58):
What makes a good description. The best descriptions have the
ingredients up front and then the copy about it at
the end. You know, because a person when they're looking
over a menu, they're looking for what they want and
those ingredients are what are going to entice them into
that item, and if they find something that they don't like,
they'll move on to the next one. But if you
(04:19):
put your copy at the front that you say, oh,
this is the best or something that sell copy at
the front of the description, they have to read through
that to get to the ingredients. And a lazy menu
is what I call when the chef just puts the
ingredients and commas and that's all it is. You know,
it doesn't tell you anything about the food or or
the item or what it's about. And again, I want
(04:41):
you to build little stories on your menus so it's
more interesting and build some personality into the menu. And
then there's also something called decoy items on menus. What
do those do? Decoys items? When we put something crazy
on the menu. How I was working in Quarterlin, Idaho,
and the owner of the resort had a fifty foot
yacht he was trying to sell. So we put the
(05:03):
steak on the menu. It said New York steak with
fifty ft yacht and a bottle of wine, and it
was four d and twenty five dollars. And then underneath
that we put New York steak without yacht forty three
bucks or whatever the price was. These things are what
we call decoys. They get your brain screwed up in
a sense and excited because it's unexpected and it's very fun. Uh,
(05:27):
And you can make a point with it. And when
you look at a menu, you've got those seven items
in each category that you have to determine which one
of those do you want? And seven is the magic
number that we use on menus because if you do
eight or more items in a section, a person will overwhelm.
You can look up the research on this. That's why
(05:47):
phone numbers had seven numbers in it, because if they
put eight or more, people couldn't remember the number. And
there's a lot of interesting research on the power of three.
Even a car ad is using that now. But when
you put three drinks, let's say, it makes it easier
to order as they put their thought into what they're
going to have. Talking about the psychology behind names, So
(06:09):
if you're going to use the name Grandma's chicken soup,
is that going to influence a consumer if they're going
to use words like that are homemade homemade ice cream? Yeah,
because it sounds better and a person when they read something,
they taste what we tell them that they're tasting. It
adds a halo of quality to it and says something
(06:30):
about it, so you know that it was developed by
somebody and it doesn't come out of a big commercial kitchen.
So by naming the food, you're adding a story behind
it and you're adding value to it. The more you
write on a menu. The longer the description, the more
value you have. And what about this, people really trick
(06:51):
that if it's that it's not a ten dollars I
don't I don't quite see people not understanding that. Let
me walk you through my theories on this. Okay, when
says hey, we're a friendly, little neighborhood place, come on in,
sit down, We're glad you're here. Nine. If you price
it at ninety nine, it says, hey, we're trying to
trick you. It's only one penny off. So you don't
(07:13):
trust that restaurant tour as much is friendlier and nicer now,
oh oh, pricing it's got a little snob appeal to it.
It says, hey, if you can't afford it, why are
you here sitting in that seat? And you take the
O O away. And it's even got more of an
attitude to it. So when you go out to a restaurant,
are you able to just sit there in order or
(07:34):
do you sort of look, oh gosh, they really want
me to do this or they should do that. What
do you what do you look for when you go
to a restaurant? You sit down? When I go to
a restaurant and sit down, I look for what I want,
and I peruse the menu. We've got the latest eye tracking,
so I can now tell how they read over a
menu and what they focus on, and we look for
the hot spots. You mean to tell me that you
have like a camera focused on somebody's eyes as they're
(07:56):
looking at a menu or is the menu looking back
at people? And what does that mean? We have these
glasses that we put on a guest and then they'll
read the menu and then they'll order, and so we'll
do some tests on new menus before they'll roll out. Typically,
the chains have hired me to do this, and I
haven't seen anyone else in the industry that is using
(08:17):
the technology that we're using. It's the best. The old
eye trackers had these big, clunky glasses and they were
very cumbersome. But the newest, latest, coolest ones are hip
and cool and you put them on and you can
walk through the restaurant and I can see what a
person sees before they sit down, because you know, maybe
they walk by a table and saw it. Yes, they
(08:37):
saw something that they liked and they ordered it. And
how much influence does that have is what we're trying
to study. Do, but I then watch their eyes on
how they go over a menu, and then I take
thirty people and I take their eye tracking tape in
a sense and layer it so I can find out
where the hot spots are. It's fun, but it's complicated.
That's pretty interesting. I really want to thank you for
(09:00):
coming in and chatting with me today. Now, I'm completely
fascinated that you saw this job, you went out and
you invented it for yourself, and you did the research
that you did. I don't want you to give away
all your secrets that we still want you to get
hired to go do your consulting, which is really kind
of cool. Greg, Thanks for coming in. Thanks more on
Food three sixty right after this quick break, Welcome back
(09:21):
to Food three sixty. I invited my next guest on
the podcast because well, wait till you hear me read
his bio, you'll understand why. Marcus Samerson's love for food
started at a young age, when he would cook in
the kitchen with his grandmother. At twenty three, he became
the youngest chef ever to receive a three star review
from The New York Times for his work at New
(09:43):
York's Aquavy. He was awarded James Beard Foundations Rising Star
Chef Award in and Best Chef in New York City
Award in two thousand three. He won Season two of
Top Chef Masters and beat Yours Truly and have Chopped
All Stars with the judges competing. And he opened several
restaurants in New York and around the world, some of
(10:03):
which we'll be talking about today. All right, Marcus, thank
you so much for coming. Do you hear that silent
drum roll? And then then Marcus walks in the room.
We had we had to do the drum roll. No,
I'm just very excited and I want to say congrats
to you. Man. This is a big deal. You got
good digs here. I know, I got like a sim
in the studio. We're in a fancy place downtown. I'm
(10:25):
very excited to be here. So you were born in Ethiopia,
raised in Sweden. We both have a European background basically, Yeah,
we're both yeah. Yeah. When you think about Aquaviere, you
think about any restaurants, right, Pushing ingredients sometimes it's something
that we feel like we we want to do because
(10:45):
we want to educate our customers, but we still want
them to feel comfortable. Like, for I have a really
silly example. I've used it before, but my menu at
Lafochette a long time ago, and I had this menu
and it was a Kuman scented carrots with some type
of fish and in bell blanc. And it was a
great dish because I love Cooman and I wrote Kuman
on the menu. Nobody bought it, and then I did
the exact same dish. I took Kuman off and people
(11:07):
were like, Wow, this is really good. I love the flavor.
What's that flavor? Like? They wouldn't order it because of
Kuman written on there. So for you have you had
that experience where they're like, I want to push the boundaries.
I want to push my my, my customers palettes boundaries,
but they don't. They're not going to know it until
they're eating it. Well, I think Scandinavian food today is
the thing, but back when we were starting it, it
wasn't a thing right. So for me, it was all
(11:30):
those Canavian flavors that it could be very foreign to people.
It was about I couldn't have a foreign ingredient and
a foreign technique, like I had to pick one, right.
That's why we had so much salmon on them in
you because people could relate to that. But if I
light smoked something, it was always about choices, right about
how do people understand Scannavian food when there was no
(11:52):
really before internet and food, you know what I mean?
So I used to say Scanavian food to me, still,
it's about building blocks. It's block pickling. Preserving is about
getting closer to nature, like foraging and all this stuff.
It's also about game meats and game meats as we
know as chef that it does taste differently. It might
be tougher, it might be this different thing. So article
(12:13):
like that when the menu was always challenging, but then
you also realized when you cook for somebody or something,
that tribe might be smaller, but you know, you have
a base to cook too, almost like if you cook
a regional Italian restaurant, right, you have that base to
cook too. And that's what I always saw, like, throw
all these fifty Scandinavians a night that's gonna come with
(12:34):
one friend and now we're like a little bit more right,
and that became the messaging, right And you and I
started also way before social media, so I think we
weren't out it in a sense like if we made
a mistake, it was a mistake for that night, but
we can go back tomorrow and fix it. It wasn't
like boom on install right away, so it's a little
bit more forgiving. You really push the boundaries with Marcado
Fi five And I remember going there because I had
(12:56):
it a little bit more money by the time you
open that place, so I was I was able to go.
That was African cuisine, and you pushed the boundaries. I
remember you who doing a peanut soup. I mean, what
was your mindset when you go, Okay, I gotta write
a menu African flavors and I'm in I'm downtown in
the meatpacking district where uh, nobody's really talking about food
right back then, well, I mean I thought, right like
(13:21):
this idea about Africa and Africa food. Right we're still
searching for that because Africa is a billion people. There's
about fifty plus nations, and you know, Europe has done
such a great way of articulating their history, both documenting
it and talking about each country in terms of pride
and history, rituals and food. When it comes to Africa,
(13:42):
the authorship has been taken away. So like you would
never say a Portuguese person and a person from Poland
should eat the same food, right, It's very clear, like
what you know, one is more herring and cabbage and
one is more bucclo, and you know beautiful sardines and
all of us. If if I would examin open up
(14:03):
the package between Nigeria and Angola, people will be like
what huh. And still to this day there is a misconception.
Yet all food stems from Africa. You think about that,
so I think that it was for me. It was
real about thinking about the authorship of things, right, like
the first wines came from the Egyptians, right, the first
(14:24):
rock came from Africa. Africa. Things that we think about
American food, like how we got rise to this country,
oakro off course and so on, it came from Africa.
Yet the authorship is just separation. And even to modern time,
if you would say to a friend, I'm going to
give you some great Belgian chocolate and she would be
he would be like, oh, that's great, cool, but where
(14:46):
exactly is the coca bean in Belgium? Right like Swiss chocolate?
He talks about it, You're like, wait, a minute. You're
not growing at there, so it's like the authorship, there's
no link therefore, so give me the list of countries
you have restaurants right now. You're obviously have restaurants in Sweden.
I know you have a West restaurant in London. You're
obviously in New York City and in New Jersey. Right
(15:06):
in New Jersey. I love that you think about New
Jersey as a different country. Yeah, we're opening when middle
of opening right now in Montreal with four seasons. Whi's
been an amazing right, that's a different country too, right,
And it's also on top of it, they speak a
language that you speak French. Well, the French don't think so.
But that's okay, good, I'm gonna come back to that. No,
but it's been I feel like being a restaurant worker,
(15:29):
being a chef, it's the biggest privilege of my life.
And be able to communicate with dishwasher, cooks, waiters, waitresses, customers,
it's such a big privilege. And for me to be
able to do that lingo all over the world, it's hard,
but it's also one of the things that actually, besides
my son, my wife gets me up in the morning
(15:51):
and be like, I'm really excited, Mark, and I know
you're excited too, And we worked for such a long
time and for us to I know you were excited
coming down here tonight to I know that, I just
know how you are. And that's such a privilege to
be able to work with something and connect with people
on different levels. It's something that you love. There's very
few jobs that you can do that. And it's not
(16:14):
a linear path. It doesn't make sense for anyone else
but me and my team. But I'm going to keep
doing it with my tribe, with my team, and people
are fortunate. People are coming still. But when you're writing
the menus to get them to come, When you're writing
a restaurant menu in Sweden or you're writing it in
New York, what differences do you find when you're writing
those menus. Well, and I've been an immigrant six times, right, so,
(16:36):
but it's also about that understanding what local means in
those places. So when we speak in Stockholm, you can't
open the restaurant without thinking about what sustainable conversation do
you want to have? So one of our restaurant there
is a third of percent of the menu is vegetarian,
and that's a starting point for just starting. So that's
in Sweden. If I go to Sweden open a restaurant
(16:57):
without a third of my menu vegetarian, I will be closed.
Maybe not, but it's sustainable at least, So it's not
it's not a flash. It's you doing that right. So
I think there's a middle where everybody want to be,
and it's sticky, and that's where everybody want to be.
But local means that it's not a tag work. You
actually have to slow everything down and have them than
this dialogue with cooks and waiters and the team in
(17:19):
the neighborhood and the neighborhood what matters here in Harlem.
You've got chicken and waffles, you've got shrimping grits, and
you've got ramen and lit. I know you, and I
know the restaurant, and you're obviously you can talk about
it much more eloquently than I can. But there's a
lot of neighborhoods up there, there's a lot of culture
up there, and you're reflecting that on the menu as
a local restaurant. That is the eloquent way of saying it.
But I'm also just inspired by the chop judges. So
(17:41):
it's clearly there's a Roman, Amanda, the Mark and just
got you gotta have one of each. The Jeffrey is
clear the most expensive. That's when the Tomahawk comes from
the week. Yeah. Yeah, there's with a lot of attitude.
That's just let's just put that out there. But I
think everybody knew that. No, But I mean Harlem, it's
a village in the city right, its own neighbor and
(18:02):
it's truly neighborhood. And East Harlem is very different. And
East Harlem has three different neighbors. One is Puerto Rican,
one is Mexican, and one started as a Jewish and
Italian neighbor for the reason that's why you got Rao's
and you know Patsy started from there, right, So that's
all representing that. And again that makes sense to me, right,
but from an outside of looking in and once you're
(18:23):
in that bar, in that place, it actually does make sense.
But not from a website, not even from an Instagram.
You kind of have to be in the thick of it.
And we're so blessed like we have every year since
we open our business gone up. And it's not something
I take lightly I think it's about all about being
inclusive and being in and of that neighborhood. And it's
(18:44):
not really I always say it's not. We don't really
own red Rooster. We have this lucky baton that we
can manage and work here, and the guest is really
telling us that better be on the menu. Right. And
it's this dialogue that I missed when I lived in Midtown, right,
Like I us go home from Maquity to walk home
and people are always nice, but no one really talk
to you. No one really talked to me. And in
(19:06):
Harlem when I walk home those five blocks, like why
is that chicken twenty eight dollars? You know my son
needs to get a job there. Uh, the prices of
the cock that sugar down? Whatever? You right to? You
hear something, you hear something. And my wife was like, Marcus,
you stopped working out like they should leave. You said, listen.
The one thing that is worse than this, it's complete silence.
That means that no one cares. There's a privilege to
(19:27):
have people in your face like that totally. And and
as you were just talking about the customers are telling
you what to do. I've had experiences on my menus
where I've put things on and I want to take
them off and I get yelled at And I know
you had that. Didn't you have something with the mac
and cheese? Yeah, your mac and cheese? What do you
put green or something? Mac and greens and super healthy ideas? Yeah,
not a good idea, but you took it off the menu.
(19:49):
And what happened? And then were they protesting that? There
was definitely a protest, but we put it back on
and then we put some options on it. But only
when something matters will it be debated. And in that chaos,
it's also the beauty of the restaurant. The soul of
the restaurant comes in that chaloe. It makes sense for
no one else. It's not an office environment, right, It's
(20:10):
really a restaurant, and that I think it's that beautiful
chaos that we really dream of a chef's right, and
those are the restaurant we want to be at. And
it's reflected in the staff, it's reflected in the menu,
it's reflected in the food and the guests. All of
it is just it's a beautiful painting restaurant. Sorry, it's
the most chaotic painting in the world. But talking about
(20:30):
menu items, like you were just saying about your mac
and cheese, and you have to keep it on. I
had that problem when it was more of the press
that did it to me. I remember open Landmark and
I had this was just a silly dish I took
for fider roles instead of putting them in the dessert menu.
I filled them with goat cheese and sweet garlic, and
I put three of them on a plate and I
made a little salad with some roasted red peppers and freeze.
And it was a good dish. I liked it. And
(20:53):
then somebody wrote about it in the press, and I
was just about to take it off the menu, and
then I couldn't take it off the US, and then
I tried to take it off the menu, and I
was like, it was one of these things. I was like,
this damn thing is gonna be on that. And I
think it was on the Landmark menu for close to
ten years until I was able to take it off.
And finally I'm like, I don't care what they say.
(21:13):
I'm taking it off, Okay. I'm making this decision, okay,
and I'm not letting the press decide what I'm supposed
to have with my menu, but it does. But you
have to say, between the press and between your customers,
they dictate what you're gonna have on your menu. Sometimes
cooking and being a chef, it's so much part of
being the craftsman, but it's also an artist. And then
you have to let that go and then send it
(21:34):
out to like because now it's not yours, and now
it's the customers. Soon the stuff right, And that's where
we still struggling with it, Like, look and what about
this great what is the greatest incredible dish that you
felt that you've done and that didn't resonate it but
didn't work exactly. You're sitting there eating this, going this
is awesome, and you put on the menus like nobody
wants this one question substitutions on menus. Okay, so this
(21:57):
is the one thing that as a chef, because we
like to control everything, when somebody tells me that I
want the salmon set up with the chicken and the
saucer mistake. There's a reason why we're supposed to stay
in the kitchen at that point because you're like, all right,
I've created this dish not for you. In the dining
room to go screw it up, but what is your
what is your feeling on substitutions? So I'm with you.
(22:18):
We thought about the texture, we thought about the sauce,
we put it in the season, we know about the farmerhood,
did it right? And then somebody said that exactly what
you said. And in the rest, I'm like, okay, let's
do it. All of that right to come down, Okay,
I want you to be happy. That's what I've learned, right,
So that's what we're doing. But inside it's like raging bull.
(22:38):
It's like, you know, I've also learned. I remember the
first time somebody pulled up a laptop in the dining room, right,
so I'm like and and when people start to take
pictures of the food, I was kind of like scrashing
my head. I'm like, what's happening here? Can you actually
do that? And the service like he just did and
there was like one second of the service, but from
(23:00):
it's like, wait a minute, that's not what we're supposed
to dine. So we constantly are change exactly. You don't
want to be left on that island where like I
told you, so you're like the old grumpy French chef
that's still by himself in the kitchen. Not French, but exactly.
All right, Before I let you go, let's do a fun,
(23:21):
rapid fire round of questions. I'm going to ask you
something and tell me the first thing that pops into
your head. What is the best meal you've ever had
the vegetarian tasting menu had at the Landcast in Monte Carlo.
It's the best meal I've ever had. What's the one
thing on the menu that you will always order? I
always thought with seafoot start, I love like crudeo Sashima,
I'm like that. I always thought light that's the Sweden
(23:42):
and yeah, yeah, it's probably it. And what's the one
thing on the menu never order? Yeah? I am allergic
to buckwheat. I got it later in life. I miss
eating soba noodles and stuff like that. Other than that,
I anything you're at it. What's the one thing you
stay away from a menu? Supple exactly? You mean, like
the chicken anna salad or something like that was never
(24:05):
really meant to be there, And I was like, no,
it was just meant to appeace somebody that's going to
try to change the menu right now, You're probably right.
Your favorite thing to cook at the restaurant. I get
very excited actually now about spring, right because like it
is that, Yeah, rhubarb is coming, ramped is coming, like
all of that stuff. Right, we get a kitty, especially
if the cold winter like this. I mean, now you
have great salmon coming, great stiff to come from the
(24:26):
West coast. It's good stuff. There's so many beautiful things
out there. Three people alive or dead that you'd want
to have a meal with. Somebody that had helped me
so much? Is shef Cholotte Trotter, And he did so
much for American food and the Chicago food team would
be completely different without him. Also, Nelson Mandela would be
an amazing opportunity. I was supposed to do dinner a
couple of times and it just didn't work out. But
(24:49):
as I would say, those two and then um my
Grandma Helga, we would talk food and different point of views.
And your grandma was a pretty big influence on you.
Huge from also that idea that she was born very poor.
She was in domestic labor, and nobody asked her if
she liked her job. But the food she cooked her
language much more than talking was food and when you're
(25:12):
cooking in the kitchen, what do you listen to? It?
It's a New York mins. It could be everything from
Tribe Cold Quest. But today we were actually listening to
a little bit kiss. We were talking about kiss, which
is fun. And I'm all over the place with music
and I love I mean, David Bowie Prince will be
on of course, but there's nothing wrong with a little
kiss before the makeup came off, not after. That's a
(25:32):
very big difference. It's a difference. Yeah, it sounds good,
sounds good, all right, Marcus, thank you so much for joining.
I'm so proud of you. This is exciting, alright. Thank well.
I hope you've got something out of all that men
you talk. I know I certainly did. I'm going to
look at the menu a little differently when I go
out next time. I want to thank Greg Rapp and
(25:55):
Marcus Samerson for joining me and we'll see you next time. Ye.
Food through six is a production of I Heart Radio
and I'm your host, Mark Murphy. A very special thanks
to Emily Carpet, my director of Communications, and producers, Nikki
e Tor and Christina Everett. Mixing and music by Anna
Stump and recording help from Julian Weller and Jacopo Benzel.
(26:19):
Thank you to Bethan Macaluso and Kara Weisenstein for handling research.
Food through Sixty is executive produced by Manguesh head Ticketer.
For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Food three sixty with Mark Murphy is a production of
I Heart Radio. I want you to build little stories
on your menus so it's more interesting, and build some
personality into the menu. I always say, we don't really
the guest is really telling us that better be on
(00:23):
the menu. Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that
serves up some serious of food for thought. I'm your host,
Mark Murphy. Some of you may know me as a
chef and a New York restaurateur. Today's episode is all
about menus. Sure, a clever design in a cool looking
(00:44):
place is important, but a restaurant is nothing without a
solid menu. My guest Marcus Samuelson and Greg Rapp, who
you heard at the start of the show, both know
a thing or two about that. I sat down first
with Greg. He's been working in the menu engineering field
for the past thirty six years, and he has developed
his own tools and strategies to help more than a
(01:04):
thousand restaurants and hotels built successful and profitable menus. Greg,
thank you so much for joining me here. Thank you,
it's great to be here. My first question, when you
go out to eat and you see other restaurant menus,
what is the number one mistake people do. The biggest
mistake I see is when they put a price list
on the right side that will list all the prices,
(01:25):
so a guest will find the cheapest item and then
read the menu that way. What I would do on
a menu is put the description and then put a
period and then two spaces, and then put the price
in the same font. That way, if you're looking for
the cheapest item, you can find it, but you're not
gonna look at the menu for price. The other big
(01:47):
mistake I see on menus is dollar signs. I've been
taking those off menus for thirty seven years now. They
just remind people of money. So say you have a
hundred and fifty menu, items may have a hundred and
fifty dollar signs. If you remove those, it softens those prices.
Does that also count on wine menus as well. Wineless
are the worst menus there are because they just give
(02:08):
us the name of the wine and a price, and
so the restaurateur tasted hundreds of wines and only a
few wines end up on the list. A restaurateur should
explain why that wine is on the list and tell
the story behind it. That's what I love about iPad
menus is iPad menus. Now you can get as much
or as little information as you want. So how does
(02:29):
a menu influence what people are going to order? Well,
think about those restaurants in New York that you see
that have the sandwich name is just a person's name,
you know, in the delis and you have to read
all the ingredients to figure out what it is. So
when the menu is laid out with strange names and
it's not organized correctly, a person has to read the
(02:51):
whole menu and they will overwhelm. And when a person overwhelms,
they'll default to a menu item that is easy or
what they had last time tim or you know when
you go into these casual chain restaurants and they hand
you a huge pile of menus and books and bar
books and all of that, they go, I know this
place has a cheeseburger and a beer. Take all this
work away and bring me a cheeseburger and beer. But
(03:14):
if you organize the menu and a person can navigate
it and find items, if they can go through their
categories and they can go to a seafood section if
they're interested in seafood, or they can go away from
that seafood section if they aren't interested in seafood. And
like I say, the sooner a person finds what they want,
the more they'll typically order too, they'll order more. In
(03:37):
the pizza industry, if if they're putting the pizza together
on their own instead of ordering a signature pizza and
their arm wrestling with their whole family on what goes
on the pizza today, they're not going to order as
many salads or as many breadsticks. So the sooner we
can help them order a signature pizza, the more they'll
typically order. So how you describe a dish is important.
(03:58):
What makes a good description. The best descriptions have the
ingredients up front and then the copy about it at
the end. You know, because a person when they're looking
over a menu, they're looking for what they want and
those ingredients are what are going to entice them into
that item, and if they find something that they don't like,
they'll move on to the next one. But if you
(04:19):
put your copy at the front that you say, oh,
this is the best or something that sell copy at
the front of the description, they have to read through
that to get to the ingredients. And a lazy menu
is what I call when the chef just puts the
ingredients and commas and that's all it is. You know,
it doesn't tell you anything about the food or or
the item or what it's about. And again, I want
(04:41):
you to build little stories on your menus so it's
more interesting and build some personality into the menu. And
then there's also something called decoy items on menus. What
do those do? Decoys items? When we put something crazy
on the menu. How I was working in Quarterlin, Idaho,
and the owner of the resort had a fifty foot
yacht he was trying to sell. So we put the
(05:03):
steak on the menu. It said New York steak with
fifty ft yacht and a bottle of wine, and it
was four d and twenty five dollars. And then underneath
that we put New York steak without yacht forty three
bucks or whatever the price was. These things are what
we call decoys. They get your brain screwed up in
a sense and excited because it's unexpected and it's very fun. Uh,
(05:27):
And you can make a point with it. And when
you look at a menu, you've got those seven items
in each category that you have to determine which one
of those do you want? And seven is the magic
number that we use on menus because if you do
eight or more items in a section, a person will overwhelm.
You can look up the research on this. That's why
(05:47):
phone numbers had seven numbers in it, because if they
put eight or more, people couldn't remember the number. And
there's a lot of interesting research on the power of three.
Even a car ad is using that now. But when
you put three drinks, let's say, it makes it easier
to order as they put their thought into what they're
going to have. Talking about the psychology behind names, So
(06:09):
if you're going to use the name Grandma's chicken soup,
is that going to influence a consumer if they're going
to use words like that are homemade homemade ice cream? Yeah,
because it sounds better and a person when they read something,
they taste what we tell them that they're tasting. It
adds a halo of quality to it and says something
(06:30):
about it, so you know that it was developed by
somebody and it doesn't come out of a big commercial kitchen.
So by naming the food, you're adding a story behind
it and you're adding value to it. The more you
write on a menu. The longer the description, the more
value you have. And what about this, people really trick
(06:51):
that if it's that it's not a ten dollars I
don't I don't quite see people not understanding that. Let
me walk you through my theories on this. Okay, when
says hey, we're a friendly, little neighborhood place, come on in,
sit down, We're glad you're here. Nine. If you price
it at ninety nine, it says, hey, we're trying to
trick you. It's only one penny off. So you don't
(07:13):
trust that restaurant tour as much is friendlier and nicer now,
oh oh, pricing it's got a little snob appeal to it.
It says, hey, if you can't afford it, why are
you here sitting in that seat? And you take the
O O away. And it's even got more of an
attitude to it. So when you go out to a restaurant,
are you able to just sit there in order or
(07:34):
do you sort of look, oh gosh, they really want
me to do this or they should do that. What
do you what do you look for when you go
to a restaurant? You sit down? When I go to
a restaurant and sit down, I look for what I want,
and I peruse the menu. We've got the latest eye tracking,
so I can now tell how they read over a
menu and what they focus on, and we look for
the hot spots. You mean to tell me that you
have like a camera focused on somebody's eyes as they're
(07:56):
looking at a menu or is the menu looking back
at people? And what does that mean? We have these
glasses that we put on a guest and then they'll
read the menu and then they'll order, and so we'll
do some tests on new menus before they'll roll out. Typically,
the chains have hired me to do this, and I
haven't seen anyone else in the industry that is using
(08:17):
the technology that we're using. It's the best. The old
eye trackers had these big, clunky glasses and they were
very cumbersome. But the newest, latest, coolest ones are hip
and cool and you put them on and you can
walk through the restaurant and I can see what a
person sees before they sit down, because you know, maybe
they walk by a table and saw it. Yes, they
(08:37):
saw something that they liked and they ordered it. And
how much influence does that have is what we're trying
to study. Do, but I then watch their eyes on
how they go over a menu, and then I take
thirty people and I take their eye tracking tape in
a sense and layer it so I can find out
where the hot spots are. It's fun, but it's complicated.
That's pretty interesting. I really want to thank you for
(09:00):
coming in and chatting with me today. Now, I'm completely
fascinated that you saw this job, you went out and
you invented it for yourself, and you did the research
that you did. I don't want you to give away
all your secrets that we still want you to get
hired to go do your consulting, which is really kind
of cool. Greg, Thanks for coming in. Thanks more on
Food three sixty right after this quick break, Welcome back
(09:21):
to Food three sixty. I invited my next guest on
the podcast because well, wait till you hear me read
his bio, you'll understand why. Marcus Samerson's love for food
started at a young age, when he would cook in
the kitchen with his grandmother. At twenty three, he became
the youngest chef ever to receive a three star review
from The New York Times for his work at New
(09:43):
York's Aquavy. He was awarded James Beard Foundations Rising Star
Chef Award in and Best Chef in New York City
Award in two thousand three. He won Season two of
Top Chef Masters and beat Yours Truly and have Chopped
All Stars with the judges competing. And he opened several
restaurants in New York and around the world, some of
(10:03):
which we'll be talking about today. All right, Marcus, thank
you so much for coming. Do you hear that silent
drum roll? And then then Marcus walks in the room.
We had we had to do the drum roll. No,
I'm just very excited and I want to say congrats
to you. Man. This is a big deal. You got
good digs here. I know, I got like a sim
in the studio. We're in a fancy place downtown. I'm
(10:25):
very excited to be here. So you were born in Ethiopia,
raised in Sweden. We both have a European background basically, Yeah,
we're both yeah. Yeah. When you think about Aquaviere, you
think about any restaurants, right, Pushing ingredients sometimes it's something
that we feel like we we want to do because
(10:45):
we want to educate our customers, but we still want
them to feel comfortable. Like, for I have a really
silly example. I've used it before, but my menu at
Lafochette a long time ago, and I had this menu
and it was a Kuman scented carrots with some type
of fish and in bell blanc. And it was a
great dish because I love Cooman and I wrote Kuman
on the menu. Nobody bought it, and then I did
the exact same dish. I took Kuman off and people
(11:07):
were like, Wow, this is really good. I love the flavor.
What's that flavor? Like? They wouldn't order it because of
Kuman written on there. So for you have you had
that experience where they're like, I want to push the boundaries.
I want to push my my, my customers palettes boundaries,
but they don't. They're not going to know it until
they're eating it. Well, I think Scandinavian food today is
the thing, but back when we were starting it, it
wasn't a thing right. So for me, it was all
(11:30):
those Canavian flavors that it could be very foreign to people.
It was about I couldn't have a foreign ingredient and
a foreign technique, like I had to pick one, right.
That's why we had so much salmon on them in
you because people could relate to that. But if I
light smoked something, it was always about choices, right about
how do people understand Scannavian food when there was no
(11:52):
really before internet and food, you know what I mean?
So I used to say Scanavian food to me, still,
it's about building blocks. It's block pickling. Preserving is about
getting closer to nature, like foraging and all this stuff.
It's also about game meats and game meats as we
know as chef that it does taste differently. It might
be tougher, it might be this different thing. So article
(12:13):
like that when the menu was always challenging, but then
you also realized when you cook for somebody or something,
that tribe might be smaller, but you know, you have
a base to cook too, almost like if you cook
a regional Italian restaurant, right, you have that base to
cook too. And that's what I always saw, like, throw
all these fifty Scandinavians a night that's gonna come with
(12:34):
one friend and now we're like a little bit more right,
and that became the messaging, right And you and I
started also way before social media, so I think we
weren't out it in a sense like if we made
a mistake, it was a mistake for that night, but
we can go back tomorrow and fix it. It wasn't
like boom on install right away, so it's a little
bit more forgiving. You really push the boundaries with Marcado
Fi five And I remember going there because I had
(12:56):
it a little bit more money by the time you
open that place, so I was I was able to go.
That was African cuisine, and you pushed the boundaries. I
remember you who doing a peanut soup. I mean, what
was your mindset when you go, Okay, I gotta write
a menu African flavors and I'm in I'm downtown in
the meatpacking district where uh, nobody's really talking about food
right back then, well, I mean I thought, right like
(13:21):
this idea about Africa and Africa food. Right we're still
searching for that because Africa is a billion people. There's
about fifty plus nations, and you know, Europe has done
such a great way of articulating their history, both documenting
it and talking about each country in terms of pride
and history, rituals and food. When it comes to Africa,
(13:42):
the authorship has been taken away. So like you would
never say a Portuguese person and a person from Poland
should eat the same food, right, It's very clear, like
what you know, one is more herring and cabbage and
one is more bucclo, and you know beautiful sardines and
all of us. If if I would examin open up
(14:03):
the package between Nigeria and Angola, people will be like
what huh. And still to this day there is a misconception.
Yet all food stems from Africa. You think about that,
so I think that it was for me. It was
real about thinking about the authorship of things, right, like
the first wines came from the Egyptians, right, the first
(14:24):
rock came from Africa. Africa. Things that we think about
American food, like how we got rise to this country,
oakro off course and so on, it came from Africa.
Yet the authorship is just separation. And even to modern time,
if you would say to a friend, I'm going to
give you some great Belgian chocolate and she would be
he would be like, oh, that's great, cool, but where
(14:46):
exactly is the coca bean in Belgium? Right like Swiss chocolate?
He talks about it, You're like, wait, a minute. You're
not growing at there, so it's like the authorship, there's
no link therefore, so give me the list of countries
you have restaurants right now. You're obviously have restaurants in Sweden.
I know you have a West restaurant in London. You're
obviously in New York City and in New Jersey. Right
(15:06):
in New Jersey. I love that you think about New
Jersey as a different country. Yeah, we're opening when middle
of opening right now in Montreal with four seasons. Whi's
been an amazing right, that's a different country too, right,
And it's also on top of it, they speak a
language that you speak French. Well, the French don't think so.
But that's okay, good, I'm gonna come back to that. No,
but it's been I feel like being a restaurant worker,
(15:29):
being a chef, it's the biggest privilege of my life.
And be able to communicate with dishwasher, cooks, waiters, waitresses, customers,
it's such a big privilege. And for me to be
able to do that lingo all over the world, it's hard,
but it's also one of the things that actually, besides
my son, my wife gets me up in the morning
(15:51):
and be like, I'm really excited, Mark, and I know
you're excited too, And we worked for such a long
time and for us to I know you were excited
coming down here tonight to I know that, I just
know how you are. And that's such a privilege to
be able to work with something and connect with people
on different levels. It's something that you love. There's very
few jobs that you can do that. And it's not
(16:14):
a linear path. It doesn't make sense for anyone else
but me and my team. But I'm going to keep
doing it with my tribe, with my team, and people
are fortunate. People are coming still. But when you're writing
the menus to get them to come, When you're writing
a restaurant menu in Sweden or you're writing it in
New York, what differences do you find when you're writing
those menus. Well, and I've been an immigrant six times, right, so,
(16:36):
but it's also about that understanding what local means in
those places. So when we speak in Stockholm, you can't
open the restaurant without thinking about what sustainable conversation do
you want to have? So one of our restaurant there
is a third of percent of the menu is vegetarian,
and that's a starting point for just starting. So that's
in Sweden. If I go to Sweden open a restaurant
(16:57):
without a third of my menu vegetarian, I will be closed.
Maybe not, but it's sustainable at least, So it's not
it's not a flash. It's you doing that right. So
I think there's a middle where everybody want to be,
and it's sticky, and that's where everybody want to be.
But local means that it's not a tag work. You
actually have to slow everything down and have them than
this dialogue with cooks and waiters and the team in
(17:19):
the neighborhood and the neighborhood what matters here in Harlem.
You've got chicken and waffles, you've got shrimping grits, and
you've got ramen and lit. I know you, and I
know the restaurant, and you're obviously you can talk about
it much more eloquently than I can. But there's a
lot of neighborhoods up there, there's a lot of culture
up there, and you're reflecting that on the menu as
a local restaurant. That is the eloquent way of saying it.
But I'm also just inspired by the chop judges. So
(17:41):
it's clearly there's a Roman, Amanda, the Mark and just
got you gotta have one of each. The Jeffrey is
clear the most expensive. That's when the Tomahawk comes from
the week. Yeah. Yeah, there's with a lot of attitude.
That's just let's just put that out there. But I
think everybody knew that. No, But I mean Harlem, it's
a village in the city right, its own neighbor and
(18:02):
it's truly neighborhood. And East Harlem is very different. And
East Harlem has three different neighbors. One is Puerto Rican,
one is Mexican, and one started as a Jewish and
Italian neighbor for the reason that's why you got Rao's
and you know Patsy started from there, right, So that's
all representing that. And again that makes sense to me, right,
but from an outside of looking in and once you're
(18:23):
in that bar, in that place, it actually does make sense.
But not from a website, not even from an Instagram.
You kind of have to be in the thick of it.
And we're so blessed like we have every year since
we open our business gone up. And it's not something
I take lightly I think it's about all about being
inclusive and being in and of that neighborhood. And it's
(18:44):
not really I always say it's not. We don't really
own red Rooster. We have this lucky baton that we
can manage and work here, and the guest is really
telling us that better be on the menu. Right. And
it's this dialogue that I missed when I lived in Midtown, right,
Like I us go home from Maquity to walk home
and people are always nice, but no one really talk
to you. No one really talked to me. And in
(19:06):
Harlem when I walk home those five blocks, like why
is that chicken twenty eight dollars? You know my son
needs to get a job there. Uh, the prices of
the cock that sugar down? Whatever? You right to? You
hear something, you hear something. And my wife was like, Marcus,
you stopped working out like they should leave. You said, listen.
The one thing that is worse than this, it's complete silence.
That means that no one cares. There's a privilege to
(19:27):
have people in your face like that totally. And and
as you were just talking about the customers are telling
you what to do. I've had experiences on my menus
where I've put things on and I want to take
them off and I get yelled at And I know
you had that. Didn't you have something with the mac
and cheese? Yeah, your mac and cheese? What do you
put green or something? Mac and greens and super healthy ideas? Yeah,
not a good idea, but you took it off the menu.
(19:49):
And what happened? And then were they protesting that? There
was definitely a protest, but we put it back on
and then we put some options on it. But only
when something matters will it be debated. And in that chaos,
it's also the beauty of the restaurant. The soul of
the restaurant comes in that chaloe. It makes sense for
no one else. It's not an office environment, right, It's
(20:10):
really a restaurant, and that I think it's that beautiful
chaos that we really dream of a chef's right, and
those are the restaurant we want to be at. And
it's reflected in the staff, it's reflected in the menu,
it's reflected in the food and the guests. All of
it is just it's a beautiful painting restaurant. Sorry, it's
the most chaotic painting in the world. But talking about
(20:30):
menu items, like you were just saying about your mac
and cheese, and you have to keep it on. I
had that problem when it was more of the press
that did it to me. I remember open Landmark and
I had this was just a silly dish I took
for fider roles instead of putting them in the dessert menu.
I filled them with goat cheese and sweet garlic, and
I put three of them on a plate and I
made a little salad with some roasted red peppers and freeze.
And it was a good dish. I liked it. And
(20:53):
then somebody wrote about it in the press, and I
was just about to take it off the menu, and
then I couldn't take it off the US, and then
I tried to take it off the menu, and I
was like, it was one of these things. I was like,
this damn thing is gonna be on that. And I
think it was on the Landmark menu for close to
ten years until I was able to take it off.
And finally I'm like, I don't care what they say.
(21:13):
I'm taking it off, Okay. I'm making this decision, okay,
and I'm not letting the press decide what I'm supposed
to have with my menu, but it does. But you
have to say, between the press and between your customers,
they dictate what you're gonna have on your menu. Sometimes
cooking and being a chef, it's so much part of
being the craftsman, but it's also an artist. And then
you have to let that go and then send it
(21:34):
out to like because now it's not yours, and now
it's the customers. Soon the stuff right, And that's where
we still struggling with it, Like, look and what about
this great what is the greatest incredible dish that you
felt that you've done and that didn't resonate it but
didn't work exactly. You're sitting there eating this, going this
is awesome, and you put on the menus like nobody
wants this one question substitutions on menus. Okay, so this
(21:57):
is the one thing that as a chef, because we
like to control everything, when somebody tells me that I
want the salmon set up with the chicken and the
saucer mistake. There's a reason why we're supposed to stay
in the kitchen at that point because you're like, all right,
I've created this dish not for you. In the dining
room to go screw it up, but what is your
what is your feeling on substitutions? So I'm with you.
(22:18):
We thought about the texture, we thought about the sauce,
we put it in the season, we know about the farmerhood,
did it right? And then somebody said that exactly what
you said. And in the rest, I'm like, okay, let's
do it. All of that right to come down, Okay,
I want you to be happy. That's what I've learned, right,
So that's what we're doing. But inside it's like raging bull.
(22:38):
It's like, you know, I've also learned. I remember the
first time somebody pulled up a laptop in the dining room, right,
so I'm like and and when people start to take
pictures of the food, I was kind of like scrashing
my head. I'm like, what's happening here? Can you actually
do that? And the service like he just did and
there was like one second of the service, but from
(23:00):
it's like, wait a minute, that's not what we're supposed
to dine. So we constantly are change exactly. You don't
want to be left on that island where like I
told you, so you're like the old grumpy French chef
that's still by himself in the kitchen. Not French, but exactly.
All right, Before I let you go, let's do a fun,
(23:21):
rapid fire round of questions. I'm going to ask you
something and tell me the first thing that pops into
your head. What is the best meal you've ever had
the vegetarian tasting menu had at the Landcast in Monte Carlo.
It's the best meal I've ever had. What's the one
thing on the menu that you will always order? I
always thought with seafoot start, I love like crudeo Sashima,
I'm like that. I always thought light that's the Sweden
(23:42):
and yeah, yeah, it's probably it. And what's the one
thing on the menu never order? Yeah? I am allergic
to buckwheat. I got it later in life. I miss
eating soba noodles and stuff like that. Other than that,
I anything you're at it. What's the one thing you
stay away from a menu? Supple exactly? You mean, like
the chicken anna salad or something like that was never
(24:05):
really meant to be there, And I was like, no,
it was just meant to appeace somebody that's going to
try to change the menu right now, You're probably right.
Your favorite thing to cook at the restaurant. I get
very excited actually now about spring, right because like it
is that, Yeah, rhubarb is coming, ramped is coming, like
all of that stuff. Right, we get a kitty, especially
if the cold winter like this. I mean, now you
have great salmon coming, great stiff to come from the
(24:26):
West coast. It's good stuff. There's so many beautiful things
out there. Three people alive or dead that you'd want
to have a meal with. Somebody that had helped me
so much? Is shef Cholotte Trotter, And he did so
much for American food and the Chicago food team would
be completely different without him. Also, Nelson Mandela would be
an amazing opportunity. I was supposed to do dinner a
couple of times and it just didn't work out. But
(24:49):
as I would say, those two and then um my
Grandma Helga, we would talk food and different point of views.
And your grandma was a pretty big influence on you.
Huge from also that idea that she was born very poor.
She was in domestic labor, and nobody asked her if
she liked her job. But the food she cooked her
language much more than talking was food and when you're
(25:12):
cooking in the kitchen, what do you listen to? It?
It's a New York mins. It could be everything from
Tribe Cold Quest. But today we were actually listening to
a little bit kiss. We were talking about kiss, which
is fun. And I'm all over the place with music
and I love I mean, David Bowie Prince will be
on of course, but there's nothing wrong with a little
kiss before the makeup came off, not after. That's a
(25:32):
very big difference. It's a difference. Yeah, it sounds good,
sounds good, all right, Marcus, thank you so much for joining.
I'm so proud of you. This is exciting, alright. Thank well.
I hope you've got something out of all that men
you talk. I know I certainly did. I'm going to
look at the menu a little differently when I go
out next time. I want to thank Greg Rapp and
(25:55):
Marcus Samerson for joining me and we'll see you next time. Ye.
Food through six is a production of I Heart Radio
and I'm your host, Mark Murphy. A very special thanks
to Emily Carpet, my director of Communications, and producers, Nikki
e Tor and Christina Everett. Mixing and music by Anna
Stump and recording help from Julian Weller and Jacopo Benzel.
(26:19):
Thank you to Bethan Macaluso and Kara Weisenstein for handling research.
Food through Sixty is executive produced by Manguesh head Ticketer.
For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the I
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