04/17/2026
Independent restaurant owners, your menu, digital or physical, is your frontline sales agent responsible for the lion’s share of your revenue. Improving and refining it can be worth hundreds of thousands to an already successful restaurant. It shapes what guests see first, how they understand what you serve, and their first impression of your business. It even informs prep, labor, and who you’re serving.
Our client had recently integrated with Toast and wanted to drive traffic away from DoorDash’s 30% commission to their own in-house ordering system at just 3%. With rising costs, they didn’t have the time or budget to build a full campaign, so we did it for them.
We created a custom tri-fold menu that could be printed in-house for 10¢, trained staff to fold it, and placed it in DoorDash bags. The “Trojan horse” style menu marketing plan made ordering direct easier and cheaper.
The result: ~$12,000/month saved across 3 locations, plus reduced labor from fewer phone orders.
And despite 90+ items on a single trifold menu paper, multiple locations and hours listed, and a big QR code, we think it still looks pretty good.
Side note: grateful to work with great people at Sushi Spot Arcata. Thank you Jason and Shoichi for being in the photo, and thank you Humboldt County for the support!
– David & Lauren
