ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Menu engineering

Alright kiddo, have you ever gone to a restaurant with mommy and daddy and looked at a big menu with a lot of yummy food options? That's called a menu. But did you know that restaurants actually use special tricks to make you pick certain foods from the menu? That's called menu engineering!

You see, restaurants want to make sure they sell lots of food and make lots of money. So, they use special ways to make you choose the things they want you to buy.

One way is by putting really tempting pictures of food on the menu or using fancy language to describe the food. For example, they might say something like "juicy flame-grilled burger" instead of just "burger". This makes you want it even more!

Another way is by putting the food they want you to buy in certain spots on the menu. Have you ever noticed that the most expensive food items are usually at the top of the menu? That's because studies show people are more likely to choose the first thing they see. And if a food item has a little star or a box around it, that's meant to make it stand out even more.

Restaurants also like to use something called "menu psychology". This means they use certain words, colors, and fonts to make you feel a certain way about the food. For instance, using red or yellow can stimulate your appetite, while blue or green can make you feel more relaxed.

So kiddo, menu engineering is just a fancy way of saying that restaurants use tricks to make you choose certain foods on the menu. But just because they're trying to sell you something doesn't mean you can't choose what you want to eat! So next time you're at a restaurant, be a smart little cookie and choose what you really want to eat, not just what the menu wants you to pick!