One of my aunt’s favourite pastimes is immersing herself in restaurant menus: admiring their design, carefully reading through the descriptions of every dish, and often engaging in lively conversations with the servers about her top choices before making a final selection. However, with the death of the traditional menu card, a casualty of the pandemic, diners like my aunt find themselves missing the tactile pleasure of this ritual. Beyond the nostalgia, they are increasingly frustrated by digital menus that require scanning codes, inputting personal details, and navigating a series of steps before even considering what to order.
The menu at Mexe
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Special Arrangement
When I set out to explore how the industry and diners are adapting to the digital shift in menus, I discovered that restaurants have taken different approaches: some have stuck with physical menus, others have learned from experiences with digital-only systems, and many are now planning to implement a combination of both.
Anush Rajasekaran who founded Mezze (2017) and Mexe (2021) in Chennai opted to offer diners only a physical menu, but plans to launch a digital one in the coming months. “We won’t go entirely digital, but will offer both versions. It is becoming a challenge to find competent staff who can enhance the dining experience and digital menus offer us a seamless process. It is where the future of dining is headed for sure,” he says. But will it go down well with older customers? “It isn’t that complicated and similar to ordering on Amazon or Flipkart, for example. You just need to add your dishes to the cart. We will have people to help if any assistance is required,” adds Anush.
The menu at Chennai’s Bharathi Mess in Mylapore
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SRINATH M
At Roastea in Bengaluru, co-founder Chaitanya Bhamidipaty explains how their digital menu was just “not working” with diners, and they have now increased the number of their revamped, non-tearable physical menus across their Koramangala and Kalyan Nagar outlets. “We always had physical menus along with digital ones, but offered the former only to diners who asked for them. Based on diner feedback, we have revamped our physical menus,” says Chaitanya, adding that physical menus are a value-addition, and “Indians love that”. Admitting that only 10% of their customers have taken to the digital mode of ordering, he says it is ideal for those who do not want to be disturbed. “There’s no contact, no manpower, no interaction involved. You just need to order and it reaches your table. This is common in Japanese and Korean markets, but it doesn’t always work with the Indian customer base,” he adds.
A diner at Roastea
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Special Arrangement
Gaurav Charnalia, co-founder of hospitality-tech platform AirMenus, explains that a restaurant can go digital in two ways: use a QR code that diners scan to get access to the menu, or use a QR code that leads to a bot chat that will ask the diner questions to place an order. “A few restaurants in Mumbai have tried the latter but it did not work,” he says, adding that the high costs of designing and printing menus is leading to more restaurants going digital.
He says they have witnessed a 120% increase in the demand for digital menus year-on-year (YOY) across India since they launched in 2020. “We have seen a 130% increase in demand YOY from Tier-1 cities such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune; a 100% increase from Tier-2 ( Nagpur, Amritsar, Chandigarh, etc.) and Tier-3 (Udaipur, Nashik, Madurai, etc.) cities,” says Gaurav.
Hole in the Wall cafe in Bengaluru offers only a physical menu
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Special Arrangement
Sticking to their guns
Nathan Harris, owner of Bengaluru’s popular Hole in the Wall cafe — which has been around since 2009 — believes that “some old-school habits never die”. He continues to have only a physical menu at his cafes and says, “While digital menus rely heavily on pictures, printed menus rely on text, imagination. Vast menus like ours are hard to read when you are browsing from top to bottom.” Even during the lockdown years, Nathan says they did not go fully digital. “We just had an option where customers could read the menu online but we still had to physically take and place orders for customers. We piloted a fully digital QR code menu at our Kammanahalli outlet but since our food is highly customisable, customers still needed waiter-assistance to place their orders.”
The food at Olive Beach
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Special Arrangement
A common thread connecting such restaurateurs is the fact that physical menus reflect the story of a restaurant. Tushar Fernandes, local partner at Olive Bar & Kitchen (that runs Monkey Bar, Cantan, Fatty Bao, Sodabottle Openerwala, Toast & Tonic, in Bengaluru) says, “They let you play on the USP of a particular restaurant and help set the tone of your dining experience. It also helps a restaurant portray its creativity in the form of language, typography, material, design, and presentation.”
The new menu for Olive Beach, for instance, is centred around Mediterranean-inspired dishes, and the newly-launched concept cocktail bar, Siren’s menu is sleek and pays homage to Chinese culture. “With these two establishments we wanted to focus on the visual appeal as well as readability and understanding of the products as they are both speciality offerings. Our menus are tweaked over time to introduce fresh, seasonal or comeback items. Occasionally inserts are added to existing menus or seasonal menus are made available independently to the diner,” says Tushar who swiftly switched back to physical menus post-lockdown. “They are accessible to those who are tech-challenged or handicapped, and also offer large groups of diners the ease of ordering,” he says, adding how the interface complexity of digital menus makes it difficult for diners to customise their food choices.
Malaka Spice’s menu has illustrated maps, anecdotes, etc
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Special Arrangement
More than food
Great food and quick service aside, restaurant chains like Geetham and Adyar Ananda Bhavan in Chennai, and IDC Kitchen, MTR in Bengaluru are a crowd favourite for decades because they offer a no-fuss dining experience. Crisp, laminated menus appear seconds after you are seated, and the food follows swiftly like an assembly line. At Pune’s popular Asian restaurant Malaka Spice, which opened its doors in 1997, the menu is a reflection of the brand’s story. Ilvika Chandawarkar, Research and Business Development Manager, says, “We were the first Southeast Asian restaurant in Pune when we opened, and not many had travelled to those countries at the time. We wanted our menu to tell the story of SE Asia and its cuisine. It took nine months to conceptualise.”
A page from Malaka Spice’s menu
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Special Arrangement
Designed in a book-like format, it has illustrated maps of Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos; anecdotes on the history of dimsums, floating markets, a seasonal calendar of fishes, ingredient stories, and more. “It also offers diners an insight on what we do other than restauranting: our charity work, where we grow our produce, and the inspiration behind our dishes,” shares Illvika, adding how they were forced to go digital during the pandemic. “While these menus allow for more images and even videos, a majority of our diners prefer the physical option. Digital menus can get cumbersome as you need to click so many tabs, need to sync with software, and aren’t ideal for those who want to get away from their phones when dining out,” she adds.
A page from Ginkgo’s menu
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Special Arrangement
There is no doubt that a well-designed physical menu influences one’s overall dining experience, and gives diners a better sense of a restaurant’s personality or ambience. Something that Brehadeesh Kumar, head chef and co-owner of Ginkgo, Pune, has been mindful of. The Japanese restaurant’s menu — that he has designed and photographed for — features prominent images of the dishes that have old tiles from the restaurant in the background. “Japanese food beyond sushi is pretty new to Indian diners and it always helps to see what you are going to get. It is also designed in a way that makes it easier to add new menu items or remove out-of-stock ones just by removing a page from the plastic cover,” he says of the menu that dedicates a page to every dish.
As a standard practice in Japan, menus are offered to guests by opening and turning them in the right direction to face the guest, handed over gently with two hands, he adds. “This sense of Japanese hospitality “omotenashi” can be delivered only using physical menus.”
Guests with Ginkgo’s illustrated menu leaflets
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Special Arrangement
It was during the second lockdown that Brehadeesh handpainted water colour illustrations of each item on the menu and printed a few copies. “I hand these out to regular guests or special ones! It is something they take back as a memory. Many of them have ended up in frames at their homes,” he says of the illustrated leaflets that have information about the food, how to eat, interesting anecdotes, story of the origin etc. It was also during this time that he created a digital version of the menu. “I got QR codes made for our Instagram highlights, where I would upload the images. The QR codes were then etched on metal and placed on each table. This way we could easily control the menu by adding new items to the Instagram highlights,” he says, “Both menus are equally popular, but the physical menus are more popular with older diners and Japanese guests.”
Digital menus often require personal details such as email addresses and phone numbers that irk diners
Abhishek Bindal, COO, Aditya Birla New Age Hospitality — that helms Yauatcha, Nara Thai, among other restaurants — switched back to physical menus post lockdown. “We’ve always believed in physical menus as they are an extension of the restaurant’s story. At Hakkasan, for instance, it is in a sleek leather folder with laminated white pages, while Nara Thai is a pictorial menu,” he says, adding how a digital menu — that they had to introduce during the pandemic — might help diners learn about their offerings remotely.
A diner at Yauatcha
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Special Arrangement
Is the future digital?
Addressing the cons of digital menus, Chaitanya says,“The unnecessary collection of personal details such as email addresses and phone numbers could later be used to spam customers.” “Also, sometimes it is not a fully digital process because customers still have to wait for their bill despite ordering online. At times, a disconnect between the wait staff and kitchen staff over what order has been placed, leads to delays or frustration for the customer,” explains Nathan.
For most purposes, the digital menu at Ginkgo “is devoid of the usual complications of entering private data that come with other versions of digital menus,” says Brehadeesh, explaining that it is only a reference for placing the order which is done manually regardless. “The only feature that could be a little inconvenient is Internet connectivity or the need to log on to Instagram if you already aren’t, or if one doesn’t use Instagram. The issue is solved because we offer physical menus too.”
A page from Olive Beach’s revamped menu
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
While taking the digital route might be inevitable in a few years, for now, physical menus require a grand comeback. “A screen, no matter how well designed, cannot fully replicate the warmth and comfort of a conversation between the diner and the restaurant. Something that can never be matched or replaced by tech,” concludes Tushar.
Published – December 06, 2024 04:08 pm IST