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How to make people EAT YOUR WORDS
Words have the power to whet appetites and motivate people. They might even be the determining factor in whether a restaurant succeeds or fails.
Just ask Dr. Brian Wansink, who has researched the psychology of food for years at the University of Illinois and Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab. He found restaurants that named dishes using geographic, sensory or nostalgic labels (e.g. “traditional Cajun red beans with rice,” “satin chocolate pudding,” “grandma’s zucchini cookies”), saw sales rise 27 percent compared to the same items with plain names (“red beans and rice,” “chocolate pudding” and “zucchini cookies”).
But when “succulent Italian seafood filet” was truncated to just “seafood filet” on a university cafeteria menu and offered at the same price, sales dropped.
Use the right adjectives and modifiers and menu items become mouthwatering. Serve up milquetoast terminology and salivary glands dry up.
When interviewed by food and wine journalist Deborah Grossman for her article in Flavor & The Menu magazine, Wansink said: “When faced with food choices, what we taste is influenced by what we read. What is more appealing, calf thymus or sweetbreads? Fish eggs or caviar?”
Grossman also interviewed Jeff Tenner, executive director of culinary operations at Legal Sea Foods, the fabulously successful Boston-based restaurant chain. Tenner said the use of commonly understood words on the menu made items more accessible to diners.
For example, when “roasted ancho chile chicken” undersold at Legal Sea Foods, Tenner changed the name to “apricot-glazed chicken.” The result was a dramatic rise in sales of that food item. Tenner found that diners assumed that “ancho” meant spicy-hot rather than smoky-mild.
It’s yet another example of the power of language. Choose the right words and you can activate the human senses and motivate buying decisions.
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