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When Enrique Guerrero worked in New York City in the late 1980s, a colleague asked him if he knew how to make a new, trendy appetizer that was all the rage. Yes, said Guerrero, he could make a quesadilla.
"So I made them one," says Guerrero, today the executive chef at La Mancha Restaurant and Bar at the Galisteo Inn, about 17 miles northeast of Santa Fe. "Now that is old stuff. What we're looking for when we do appetizers now is something even more new."
That's the objective for chefs, menu developers and restaurant managers across the country, and it doesn't matter whether they're high-end operations like La Mancha, neighborhood independents or national chains. Customers can get nachos and quesadillas almost anywhere, so deciding what to offer that they can't get everywhere is key to appetizer success.
In fact, an appetizer lineup developed along those lines can improve sales without dramatically increasing costs. And it boosts employee paychecks, increases customer loyalty and gives your restaurant a point of difference with the competition.
How many operators can boast of Tostadas de Tinga, a spiced chicken stew served over corn tortillas that's a staple at Consuelo Mexican Bistro and Colibri Mexican Bistro, two traditional Mexican restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area owned by Eduardo and Sylvia Rallo? Their goal? Offering customers different, fresher flavors and more authenticity than their competitors, the Rallos say.
"Appetizers are much more important than they were just a couple of years ago," notes Izzy Kharasch, a Chicago-based restaurant consultant. "Competition is fierce, and in a lot of places sales are dropping. So appetizers give you an edge, another way to boost sales without having to do quite as much as you would with other alternatives."
One key to appetizer sales success is pricing, says Joseba Encabo, an associate professor at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., noting that operators should follow two pricing rules. First, make sure food costs don't exceed 30 percent of the appetizer price. Second, make sure appetizers don't cost more than about half of the typical entree on your menu.
"Obviously, this means prices are going to differ depending on where you are in the country," says Encabo. "You're going to have a $15 appetizer in New York. But the principle is the same no matter where you are. What you don't want to do is price appetizers so high that they compete with entrees."
As Kharasch notes, appetizers are smaller and need less preparation than entrees, so regardless of the price of ingredients, they don't cost as much to produce. This can often be as much as one-third less, which also means there is more room for marking up prices within the 30 percent and 50 percent guidelines.
Kharasch's advice: Do the math. He notes that a well-executed appetizer, like the $7 Tostadas de Tinga at Consuelo Mexican Bistro in San Jose and Colibri Mexican Bistro in San Francisco, can add as much as $50,000 annually to each store's bottom line, depending on the number of appetizers sold and the number of tables and their turnover. In fact, says Carlos Oropeza, the Rallo's marketing guru, appetizers have evolved to the point where almost every table orders one or two of them. That's also good news for the wait staff, who can earn as much as $2,000 more per person in tips each year based on bigger tickets.
"In fact," says Oropeza, "when we get an appetizer that doesn't work, it isn't so much that customers don't like it, but that the wait staff didn't do a good enough job letting the customers know about it."
Generally, appetizers are no longer the menu's stepchildren, chefs, operators and consultants say. Instead, they're an integral part of the menu, with their own rules and reasons for being, which means restaurateurs must take care in developing a lineup of these important dishes. Points to consider: Does the left-hand side of the menu complement the right-hand side? Are the appetizers lighter than the entrees? Do the flavors on the left lead into the right, instead of matching or contradicting them?
When creating an appetizer menu, savvy operators should keep the following in mind:
At Los Angeles hot spot Ciudad, chef/owners Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken tapped into the tapas trend when they introduced Tapas Sundays at Ciudad last August. From 5 to 9 p.m., customers order from an all tapas menu that includes Cabrales Blue Cheese Fritters, Piquillo Peppers Stuffed with Avocado Goat Cheese, Lobster Salad with Shaved Cucumber, Melon and Sherry-Mint Aoli, Hazelnut Meringues, Espresso-Dusted Churros and Chocolate Barcelona Cake.
Even more casual eateries can entice customers who want "small bites" instead of large entrees. At Mijita's Cocina Mexicana, Traci De Jardins' restaurant in San Francisco, diners often order several a la carte items to share. Favorites include taquitos, queso fundido, the cactus sope and the restaurant's fish taco. Another option from author Diane Morgan's book Delicious Dips: Chorizo Chile Con Queso, a Mexican cheese dip presented as a fondue.
Still, as they learned at Consuelo and Colibri, even the best-planned appetizer menu is no match for indifferent employees. Kharasch says operators must excite the wait staff about promoting add-on appetizer sales by making sure they understand the appetizers and how to sell them. One effective method: Set up daily, weekly or monthly contests, which reward employees with cash or gifts based on the number of appetizers each sells. Because, in the end, it's not about chips and salsa.
"Every now and then, we'll get someone who comes in and complains about not getting chips," says Oropeza. "But it's getting more rare. Most of the customers who come in here know we're going to give them something they can't get elsewhere, and they're delighted about that. They want different Mexican food, and that's what we give them."
And profit in the process.
Recipe Reference: Chorizo Chile Con Queso
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