Job title: Menu engineer

Companies that hire them: Restaurants around the world.

How to find out about openings: Check for positions with major restaurant consulting firms such as H.V.S. International and Technomic, or operate your own consultancy.

How much you might earn: $200,000 or more annually if you work independently.

Useful skills: A degree in hotel administration. Finance, accounting, property management, and marketing concentrations are also helpful prerequisites.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: Rapp may be the country’s only full-time menu engineer, but the restaurant industry’s hospitality consulting firms employ general consultants who offer similar services.

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Gregg Rapp doesn’t go to restaurants to savor the food, he goes to pore over menus. For 25 years, he’s traveled the world on behalf of Spago, Marriott, and other clients to discover what wording, foods, and designs are most likely to tempt diners and fatten a restaurant’s bottom line.

Rapp’s engineering begins with his scouring an establishment’s financials, sales goals, and clientele. Then he identifies and highlights star menu items that are high in profit and popularity, like crab cakes and filet mignon. Burgers and other inexpensive fare are downplayed. Another of Rapp’s structuring tricks is listing prices at the end of detailed entrée descriptions rather than in a separate column. The rationale? Spelling out a dish’s elaborate ingredients lessens the likelihood of sticker shock. Also, location is everything, and expensive entrées should always appear where readers’ eyes most often tend to gravitate: the upper-right-hand side of a two-page menu. “A few years ago when meat prices were up, we put the seafood in the top right section,” says Rapp.

Rapp restructured his first menu in 1980, as an undergraduate majoring in hotel administration and advertising at Washington State University. That year, an acquaintance asked him for ideas on turning around her Mexican restaurant, which she was on the verge of closing. Rapp created a calendar of monthly promotions, trimmed the number of vendors, developed an inventory-tracking system, and overhauled the menu. “I realized that the menu was a powerful tool,” says Rapp. “You can sell a million dollars off just that piece of paper.”

After a few small-scale gigs at other hotels and bars in eastern Washington state, Rapp worked at a printing company because he believed the job would bring him closer to menu engineering. It didn’t. “I realized that I wanted to do more than printing,” Rapp says. So he landed a five-month consulting project for a Denver chain. “That was when I learned a whole lot about highlighting items and writing copy,” he says. Today, Rapp works on four or five projects a month, all from referrals. He has engineered menus for Disneyland, California Pizza Kitchen, Caesars Palace, and others.

Rapp charges a base rate of $3,000 for independent restaurants and $5,000 for chains, with a money-back guarantee if new profit doesn’t reach $1,000 within the first month. In the 15 years he’s offered the guarantee, Rapp has yet to issue a refund.

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Typical Project Schedule

Day one
7:30 p.m. After flying into the city, Rapp dines at the restaurant he will advise.

Day two
9:30 a.m. Arrives at the restaurant’s headquarters.

10:00 a.m. Conducts “State of the Menu” meeting with president, operations person, and marketing director.

12:00 p.m. Visits restaurants with marketing director; tours kitchens and storerooms.

7:30 p.m. Spends evening at restaurant, shadowing servers and studying customers.

Day three
9:30 a.m. Makes 90-minute PowerPoint presentation, “Menus: A Profits Approach.”

11:00 a.m. Unveils recommendations for current menu.

2:00 p.m. Flies home.

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