Insights

Menu engineering for delivery: naming, photos, and price points

Your delivery menu is not a printout of your dine-in menu. It's a storefront.

A delivery menu is a storefront that has a few seconds to convert a hungry, scrolling customer, and almost everything that decides whether they order happens before they read a single description. The highest-return moves are simple: put your most photogenic, highest-margin items in the first three slots, shoot clean photos of the top of every category, use plain recognisable names that customers actually search, and lay out price points so the easy choice is also a profitable one.

The first three items carry the listing

Most customers never scroll past the top of your first category. Put your most photogenic, highest-margin, most-ordered items there, not whatever your POS happens to list first. Everything below is for people who have already decided to order.

Photos do the selling

A listing with clean, consistent, well-lit photos on its hero items converts far better than one with a few stragglers. If you shoot nothing else, shoot the top of every category.

Names and descriptions are search terms

Customers search inside the app. An item with a plain, recognisable name gets found; a clever in-house name does not. Descriptions should answer the two questions that stop an order: how big is it, and how spicy is it.

Price points are structure, not guesswork

Anchor items, add-ons, and combos should be laid out so the easy choice is also a profitable one. Menu engineering is the least glamorous and most reliable lever on the platforms, and it costs nothing but attention.

This is the kind of work we run end to end for restaurants in Mumbai. See how our Aggregator Growth engagement works.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Lead your first category with your most photogenic, highest-margin items, add clean photos on every hero item, use plain searchable names, and set price points so the easy choice is profitable. Most of the conversion happens before the customer reads a description.

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