Ask HN: How come restaurants are still using food menu full of text? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How come restaurants are still using food menu full of text?

6 pointskilimchoi11 comments

I think that it will be more convenient for customers if they can see photos of food on the menu before they decide what to eat. Are there no companies that are trying to solve this problem? I mean it would also benefit restaurant owners too because they can update the availability of food in real time.

View on HN

Once I was sent to Tokyo. The language barrier was difficult. As a European I'm used to the idea I can figure out French, German, Spanish, etc. But the symbols were just alien. One day we were looking for food and found a small place which had pictures on their menu. Perfect I thought. I can see exactly what I'll eat, with no confusion and no complicated discussions.

I ordered a burger. Or I thought I did.

What I got was a fish-cake in a bun.

And that's exactly why picture menus fail. A bowl of soup? How do you photograph that? If it is green does that mean pea soup? Does it mean asparagus soup? Does it mean lentil soup? They will look identical.

Similarly a chicken-burger, vegetarian-burger, fish-cake in a bun, or hamburger will look identical. You need the text to differentiate them. (Not to mention the text is more concise. Just imagine "jacket potato with toppings such as: tuna, cheese, beans, salad, tomato." How many pictures do you include before you just give up and say "More available"?)

It is difficult to photograph food and make it look nice. If you photograph real food as t comes from the kitchen it looks nasty. If you fake the food (boat varnish the chicken) it sets unrealistic expectation.

Restaurants don't have much money. Single colour printing; dual colour printing; are cheaper than full colour printing. That cost recurrs every time you change your menu. You don't want anything forcing you to stay to the same menu.

Photographs of food are associated with low quality places.

I do agree that a photo of the food would normally be a good thing. It's more accessible than writing - to people with a reading disability; people with a learning disability; people who don't speak the language the menu is written in.

Probably because a physical menu actually takes less time to select a meal from. In the worst case, if every restaurant had their own menu app/site think about how long it would take a newcomer to install/navigate then figure out how the UI worked.

Plus you would still need to have physical menus as backup for those customers that don't have smartphones, are out of battery, etc.

I've seen some sushi spots have their menu on an iPad; and it worked pretty well. However, personally I also enjoy the conversational aspect of placing an order with a human server (with the interaction influencing the value of my tip).

This virtual menu concept brought this article to my mind: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/07/vira...

Conventionally iterating images is harder than conventionally iterating sounds...people typically speak faster than they draw. The success of text is that it abstracts over speech in the realm of drawing.

Text allows us to talk about the future. Photographs only let us talk about the past. I can write a description of a dish I plan to make. I have to make the dish to photograph it. A week later I can edit "a medley of peas and carrots" to "a medley of peas, carrots and chicken gizzards" without setting up lights and trying to photograph chicken gizzards in a way that distinguishes them from chicken livers.

The standard way to visually express a restaurant menu is by showing the actual food...e.g "Here is today's special" or "here is the desert cart."

I was traveling in Homs, Syria, about a decade ago and I met a Dutch couple at the hotel. We had dinner together, and I had enough Arabic to order most of the food, but I was trying to stress that the woman was vegetarian.

When I couldn't clearly do so, the boyfriend pulled out a large picture book and started flipping through the pages. He came to one with an image of meat/chicken and a large, red circle with a slash through it. He pointed at his girlfriend, then at the picture, and the waiter nodded. She got the vegetarian version of a bean dish that often has some meat served in it as well.

I was impressed. The book was indexed and divided into categories for everything – bathrooms, the airport, food, hospital visits, etc. It covered so many cases that I had needed addressed in my travels and many more I had never considered needing to communicate. I travel enough that I have sought this book for a decade, and I would pay good money for an indexed app that could do the same thing.

Menus are just the tip of the iceberg.

IMO: Menus can change often Good food photography is hard/expensive Hard to present tastefully/there's a stigma Overall, there's no demand from customers for pictures/limited utility over text descriptions

With text all you need is a name and a list of ingredients. The customer's imagination does the rest. In his mind, he will see the perfect dish, especially if he is hungry.

If you use photos, you need a professional photographer with a studio. You can't just snap pictures in the kitchen because the food won't look appetizing. In the end, it's all about effort vs gain. And a text menu takes the least effort and provides the most gain.

My favorite is to have a decent artist do illustrations - the abstraction of food, the idea of food - is always more appetizing in my opinion. Do not show the actual food. Actual food usually doesn't look that great without manipulating the environment.

actually a universal 'menu language' via some sort of emoji-like icon would be awesome

In India, some restaurants still provide a printed menu. Most of the time, when I order something, it uses to be a hit and trail exercise.

Fast foods have pictures.

Also I never see a menu full of pictures good looking. Typography > images.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com