Assignment Task:
Priorities: Know guest demographics, area competition on similar menu items, profitability expectations, quality level, and know what your operating limitations are.
Consider Menu Categories: Will you highlight soups, salads, appetizers, entrees, desserts, beverages, specialty or featured items, all-of-these?
Determine number of items/category: Consider variety, temperature (cold/hot/room temperature), preparation method, texture, shape/size, flavor, color, composition, and balance.
Establish Quality Standards: Standardized recipes and product purchase specifications need to be written for each item. Standardized recipes will identify the types of ingredients within that menu item, amounts of each, and preparation method. Specification sheets define the quality requirements of each ingredient. Together, they'll give you the tools to provide consistency in your offerings.
Write Descriptions: Good descriptions will influence your patron's choices. Truth-in-menu issues arise from poorly written descriptions. For example, "Fresh Jumbo Gulf Shrimp" written for a Shrimp Scampi entree description cannot be made with frozen shrimp from Vietnam (largest shrimp importer to the US).
Present and outline a menu that you could use for the recipe and restaurant you described in your introduction.
Show the example menu page[s] in an appendix to the writing (appendices follows the reference list)
Evaluate and critique the shown menu page[s] in your written analysis
Identify who the target market is and explain how menu choices are affected by who the target market is.
Assess how your operations will utilize standardized recipes for examples from your menu as well as how operations will be affected by truth-in-menu requirements.
Each of the aforementioned steps should be represented. For the description component, use the recipe you identified and/or another highlighted item that would best demonstrate how to write an effective description.
Note: The "restaurant" could be any style [scope/scale] of foodservice necessary to provide sufficient assessment of a menu type and planning.