✅Menu Best Practices
Menu Best Practices
For kea’s AI to handle your menu intelligently, several details need to be present for each of your menu items, regardless of what Point of Sale (POS) you use. This article will detail each, and explain how the AI will use that information when callers are placing orders.
Menu items must have descriptions
Consider the Breakfast Plate above. The AI has no idea what is included with this menu item. Eggs? Bacon? Toast? The AI needs to have a description of the menu item in order to know these things. Callers may ask for an “egg plate”--the AI might guess this means the Breakfast Plate, but it instead may just reply “I’m sorry, I don’t see an ‘egg plate’ on our menu”. If you include a description of the item (such as what it comes with), the AI will easily infer that “egg plate” likely means the Breakfast Plate, as it is the only plate on the menu that comes with eggs.
Menu items should have modifiers for any/all possible customizations
Your customers like to customize the items they order. This is only possible if those menu items support those customizations! Consider the Half Slab of Ribs above–if a caller asks for “no sauce”, “extra sauce”, or “a side of ranch”, the AI will reply “I’m sorry, this menu item doesn’t allow me to customize it that way”.
Think of all the ways a customer might want to modify or customize this menu item, and ensure that each item offers that ability. Common customizations include:
Specifying a required selection such as salad dressing or protein choice, e.g. “Chicken” vs “Pork”
Removing a default ingredient, e.g. “No tomato”
Modifying a default ingredient, e.g. “Extra sauce” or “Lettuce wrap” (burger bun substitution)
Asking for an added ingredient not usually included by default, e.g. “Crispy onions”
Flavors, e.g. “Cajun style” vs “Traditional”
Sizes, e.g. “Large” vs “Small”
Quantity, e.g. “6 pieces” vs “10 pieces” for chicken wings or appetizers
Cooking methods, e.g. “Well done” or “Extra crispy”
Be as comprehensive as possible, as the AI cannot place orders to your POS if your POS does not offer that customization! The example below is better as it lets customers remove ingredients they may not want, but does not (yet) offer the ability to add extras.
Separate option groups for default ingredients vs extras
The AI does not inherently know what ingredients come on your menu items by default. It infers it based on the description of the item as well as the option groups available for the item. If default options are in the same option group as paid/extra/add-on options, if the customer says “get me what it usually comes with”, the AI will inadvertently include paid options as well, like in the example below.
By separating options into separate groups, such as default ingredients vs paid extras like in the example below, the AI will avoid this mishap.
Menu item descriptions should mention any required selections
Many of your menu items are named similarly, and your customers don’t always say the name of the menu item when they order. Consider the item below–customers may ask for “a small chicken plate”. The AI may ask “did you mean the Chicken Tender Plate?”, a totally different menu item. The AI does not know that the Small BBQ Plate can come with chicken, because it is not part of this item’s description.
To help the AI identify the item the caller is asking for, mention the possible selections in the description of the item, such as “Pork, Chicken, or Sausage. Served with 3 sides”. This way, the AI will know that chicken is a possible meat choice for the Small BBQ Plate, and ask the caller to clarify “when you say ‘small chicken plate’, do you mean the Chicken Tender Plate or the Small BBQ Plate with chicken?”.
Combine menu items that come in different sizes or quantities
Consider these tea items:
Small Tea
Unsweetened
Half and half
Sweet
Large Tea
Unsweetened
Half and half
Sweet
This could also be structured like this:
Unsweet Tea
Small
Large
Half and Half Tea
Small
Large
Sweet Tea
Small
Large
The latter is always better for the AI–why? Because the vast majority of customers are firstly focused on what they want to have, then fill in the details (like size) afterward. They are far more likely to say “get me a sweet tea” than they are “get me a large tea”. The AI has a much easier time identifying the desired item if it follows how most callers talk.
Other examples include things like combining “Large French Fries” and “Small French Fries” into a single French Fries menu item, with a required option for size selection.
Likewise, the same is the case for items that come with different quantities, such as a “6 Piece Chicken Wing Basket” and a “10 Piece Chicken Wing Basket”--make it just one menu item, with a required option for the quantity of pieces.
Menu item names must be unique and sufficiently different
To help the AI identify the right menu item a caller is seeking to order, you should ensure items on your menu are unique enough to remove any room for error.
Menu item names that are different, but only differ in the ordering of the same words are not sufficiently different.
Menu item names that differ only in capitalization and/or punctuation are not sufficiently different.
Menu item names that differ only in size-related words (e.g. small, medium, large) and their common abbreviations (S, Sm, M, Med, L, Lg, etc) are not sufficiently different. You should combine these items together, and make an option for their size variations.
Menu item names that differ only in numbers or spelled-out numbers (e.g. six, ten, twelve) are not sufficiently different. You should combine these items together, and make an option for their quantity variations.
Avoid using “exclusion” or “remove” options and option groups
Consider a burger that comes with lettuce, tomato, and onions by default. You might have an option group for them that looks like either of these:
Remove Ingredients
Lettuce
Tomato
Onions
Or…
Remove Ingredients
No Lettuce
No Tomato
No Onions
Both of these setups are confusing to the AI, and may result in inaccurately-customized orders and unhappy customers. Rather than having “exclusion” options or option groups like in the above example, have “included by default” options and option groups like below:
Ingredients
Lettuce
Tomato
Onions
In your menu, set up this option group where each of these ingredients are included by default. When a caller asks for “no onions”, the AI will know to include the lettuce and tomato but exclude the onions.
Consider alternative names for commonly-customized items
You may offer some items that your customers call by different names, for example a Grits Bowl that can have sausage added to it may frequently be called a “sausage bowl” by your customers. It is not guaranteed that the AI will infer that “sausage bowl” actually means a Grits Bowl with sausage added to it–the AI might reply “I’m sorry, I don’t see a ‘sausage bowl’ on our menu”.
To help this, it is good practice to create a separate item called “Sausage Bowl”, which essentially is just a Grits Bowl with added sausage. Despite them being two separate menu items representing the same dish, this will help the AI more easily identify that item when a caller orders it.
Spell out whole words instead of using abbreviations or alternate spellings
Common abbreviations for sizes or units of measurement, like oz = ounces, L = liter, L = large, pc = piece, etc, will be read literally by the AI: a “6pc Chicken Wings” will be read as “six pee-cee chicken wings”. To avoid this, spell out the entire word.
If you have items with alternate spellings, like “Chik’n Wangz”, the AI will understand it when callers talk about it, but may mispronounce it when saying it back to the caller. You might consider modifying these names if the experience for your callers is poor.
Handling exotic/foreign food names and pronunciations
Similar to the above, the AI may struggle with identifying and pronouncing the names of exotic or foreign menu items. A good way to handle this is to list both the foreign name of the item (spelled out phonetically in English) as well as its English translation, such as “Khao Pad Sapparot (Thai Pineapple Fried Rice)”.
The AI generally does well with American, Hispanic/Latin, Western European (e.g. French), and Southern European (e.g. Italian) foods, where you don’t need to do this. However the AI generally does not do well with Asian, African, or Middle Eastern foods, which is where you will find yourself having to do this.
Likewise, please do not include non-English characters anywhere in your menu (e.g. ข้าวผัดสัปปะรด) as the AI cannot handle them.
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