Today, that basic idea—the power on the side of the customer—translates to menus that try to be, in their way, seductive. Shannon Scott, of Applebee’s, describes the factors that play into the restaurant’s menu design. “It's about consumer behavior and human behavior and human habits and the way people think,” she says. She and her team consider, among other things, “what colors would draw the eye, and what colors might make you turn away.” They think about the interplay between font color and the color of the photos of the food. They think about readability in different physical spaces—since, as Scott notes, “lighting in the restaurant is going to be a little darker in the evening.”

Applebee’s also thinks about what it calls “freshness cues”: little design features that can imply to a menu-navigating customer that there are healthier foods than ribs and fries on offer. Applebee’s brand colors are red and orange—“but we'll play within those color palettes,” Scott says, “so you might see some brighter orange, going down the spectrum on the red.” The chain’s menu varies seasonally, so you’ll see those brighter colors, in particular, in the spring and summer. You’ll also see complements of green on the menu, the better to highlight the chain’s salad offerings.

Photos, as at IHOP, play an important role in the Applebee's menu design. “You use the visuals—a combination of the photography and the graphics—to pull the consumer's eye through the menu,” Scott says. “So pictures are strategically placed to guide the consumer where we want them to flow, so it's easier for them to find what they're looking for.”

When it comes to menus, in other words, there’s a fine line between seduction and navigation. As Scott puts it: “It's not as random as it may seem. Each photo is strategically placed within the section and within the page to make sure it helps with that navigation. And to ensure that whatever food story we're wanting to come through is able to come through.”

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Talk to a menu designer, and you could be forgiven for assuming that you’re talking to a web designer. Franco discusses “traffic.” Scott discusses “user experience.” They think a lot about the distribution of words and images, about creating an experience that will alternately soothe and excite, about creating a product that will entice the new customers and reward the regulars. It's a stock and flow idea, applied to customers themselves. “We want to bring something new and be able to bring excitement to the consumer,” Franco says. At the same time, though, “we want to create that equity of those consumers who want to come back.”

Striking that balance is both helped and complicated by the fact that menus at places like IHOP and Applebee’s are constantly changing: Menus may be marketing documents, but they’re also living documents. IHOP updates its menu, albeit in a much less extensive way than its 2012 overhaul, every four months, experimenting with new offerings that it’s essentially test-marketing. Some of these new offerings prove temporary and get, as Franco says, "deleted"; the most popular ones may make it to the permanent menu. It's a nice little A/B test for the world of flapjacks and omelettes.