We love creating customized menus! As a creative mind coming up with ideas comes pretty naturally. We have 3 main areas that we focus on to help us in coming up with new menus or menu items: who is the menu for, is there a theme, and what time of season is it. All 3 areas of are of equal importance as they give us an outline of what we are building off of.
Who is the menu for?
Because we have a variety of clients, it is very important for us to classify who the menu is for. For us this is usually spilt into these categories: vacation meal delivery, weekly meals and onsite personal chef service clients.
Some of the similarities within all areas would be whether there are any allergies, restrictions and/or any picky eaters that we need to accommodate for.
Vacation Meal Delivery
Many of our clients for vacation meal delivery order breakfast or snack boxes. With these we have some preset boxes that are available all the time and some seasonal ones that focus more on the time of year so that they have flavors of each season.
Weekly Meals
Most of our current meal clients are very flexible to the variety of choices each week for their meals, so we have gotten to try out a number of different recipes. This has been a lot of fun for us as we have gotten to grow our knowledge of different recipes, ingredients and flavors.
We have also gotten some clients that have a number of restrictions and allergies that we need to accommodate, which allows us to learn how to change up recipes with these restrictions in mind. For these clients we really focus on offering variety that may be a challenge for them when trying to find replacements for certain ingredients.
Onsite Services
These clients usually require a conversation over the phone so that we can get a better idea as to what they are looking for, preferences, schedule, and budget. Once we have narrowed this down, we can get started on either a customized menu or a menu that we already have.
Is there a theme?
This may be a favorite area for us, but that does not make it more important than the others. We just love getting to make a fun menu based on a theme, so much so that we sometimes just have “crazy idea time” where we talk about themed restaurants and food truck ideas. Themed menus may be around what type of event it is, or it may be some sort of fandom that our client wants the food to center around.
What time of year is it?
Seasonality also plays a part in our planning since it offers us a roadmap of ingredients that would be best utilized during the times we are planning. This allows the meals, menu or event to match the feeling of time of year. Some of our most recent menus have been focused on bright, fresh flavors since we are in spring.
Some of Our Menu Creations:
Above you can see some of our seasonal menus that we have created, but we have also done many themed menus that have definitely been fun to make.
- Harry Potter Themed
- Disney Restaurant Inspired: Ohana, Cinderella’s Royal Table, Be Our Guest
- Until Death do us Part Themed
- Game of Thrones
- Winnie the Pooh
Is there an event that you need a menu for?
Send us a message! We love getting to be creative with new menus.
Check Out Our Podcast!
Want to listen to the podcast episode this post was based on? Look for How We Create Menus Below!
