Menu planners become an integral part of Bengaluru's restaurant scene

By Ipsita Basu

BENGALURU: No matter what you fancy on your plate, there's either a restaurant or an app that promises to satiate your craving. But what most do not know is the effort menu planners put in to bring you those
fingerlicking, ever-transforming dishes.

Aditya Rao, who runs Nuts Over Salads, which delivers healthy , gourmet salads, says hiring a menu planner helped him refocus on the business. "Being a chef myself, I worked and planned the menu initially . But our menus change every week and having a planner saves me a lot of time for building the business," he says.

Menu planners are gaining in importance in Bengaluru because unlike Rao, who comes from a family of restaurateurs, a lot of non-culinary but food-loving enthusiasts in the city are increasingly jumping into the food business.

Monika Manchanda, food consultant and culinary trainer, did her first commercial menu planning assignment two years ago for a client who wanted to start a café but didn't understand the intricacies of food.

"Unless the person running the establishment is a chef or someone with a deep knowledge of food, it is tough to keep abreast with current food trends. While menu planning sounds like a simple process, it entails a much deeper understanding of the business," says Manchanda, a former technology industry employee whose food blog led her to start a food consultancy called Sin-A-Mon.

Menu planning is principally about making "blueprints not just for profitability but also for USP ," says recipe developer Ambica Selvam.

"When effectively done, a good menu is what makes a food business popular, besides giving it focus and creating a benchmark to evaluate against different factors from customer experience to return on investments," she says.

A menu planner with 3-5 years of experience can make Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 a project depending on its complexity , depth of menu and the size of the business. With a few more years, they can be making Rs 70,000 to Rs 1.2 lakh a project.

"A good menu planner," says Rao of Nuts Over Salads, "is someone who shares the passion and ideas that a business needs. It's also important for the person to know extensively about ingredients, calorie counts and textures."

Manchanda lists target audience, food costs, kitchen processes and seasonality of dishes among important factors to keep in mind. "Continuity of supplies is another thing to keep in mind," she says.

Selvam adds food trials and staff training and orientation to that list.