Popular Restaurant Appetizers to Elevate Your Menu
Appetizers are easy to fire, delicious, and encourage more people to order from your restaurant. They are ideal for entertaining and gatherings, making them perfect for social occasions where guests come together to enjoy good food and company.
No matter what pops into your head when you think of appetizers, the most popular appetizers all have something in common: they’re a gateway to the rest of your food, often served as snacks during gatherings. Appetizers are typically served to guests as a way to encourage them to relax and enjoy the experience.
Why Appetizers Matter for Your Restaurant’s Menu
Appetizers are designed to build one’s appetite; they’re not supposed to be the whole show, and they don’t tend to work as a meal on their own. Instead, they get your guests thinking about food. The taste and flavor of appetizers entice guests’ senses and anticipation for the meal, making the dining experience more enjoyable right from the start.
More importantly, though, it allows your staff the perfect chance to sell drinks. Appetizers allow your guests a chance to sit and relax without the pressure of being hungry. Because of this, they’re often more willing to sit and drink, peruse the menu, and enjoy your restaurant, in turn, spending more money.
Use Takeout to Drive Customer Loyalty
Takeout isn’t just a convenience—it’s a powerful tool for building lasting relationships with your diners. But keeping diners engaged and coming back can be a challenge. In this guide, you’ll learn how to optimize your takeout strategy to encourage repeat business, increase direct orders, and strengthen customer loyalty.
How Appetizers Can Boost Your Revenue
Appetizers are an excellent way to increase ticket averages. This is because, if you do them right, they can become the entire draw of your restaurant. Groups will happily swing by to grab a few starters and drinks, taking your staff no time to prep and costing the restaurant very little. Serving appetizers quickly and efficiently is crucial to enhance the guest experience and keep the momentum going. As mentioned above, they can also encourage guests to stay longer and, ultimately, buy more food and drinks because of it.
Popular Appetizers to Elevate Your Restaurant Menu
Below are popular restaurant appetizers that can be customized in a number of ways while still delivering a comfortable, delicious snack for guests.
Classic Bruschetta
Bruschetta is a great option for restaurants that want a slightly lighter option for their starter menu. It’s quick to make, affordable, simple, and requires very little fire time, making for an excellent starter. Consisting of tomatoes, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and maybe a few kalamata olives, bruschetta pairs wonderfully with toasted bread as a quick pick up.
Homemade breadsticks are another Italian-inspired appetizer that can be served alongside bruschetta.
Spinach and Artichoke Dip
Spinach and artichoke dip is easy to make, delicious, and costs very little. Even better, it’s a popular dish because it’s familiar, most adults have had some variation of spinach and artichoke dip in their life, and it’s almost always a hit.
It’s helpful to partially prepare the dip ahead of time and store it in the fridge, so you can quickly bake and serve it when needed during busy hours.
All it takes is a bit of cream cheese and parmesan (and/or another sharp cheese of your choice), spinach, and artichoke hearts, and you’re set. Combine them in a ramekin, bake it off to get a nice crispy top, and serve with pita, tortilla chips, or crispy bread, you really can’t miss with this.
Buffalo Wings
Buffalo wings are a great example of messy, greasy bar food done right. They’re extremely simple, easy to fire quickly, and can be ordered in batches, making for a great sharing starter. Don’t be afraid to try out new rubs or sauces; lemon pepper, hot honey, or garlic ginger — the choices are nearly endless. Buffalo wings are often served with ranch dressing, which helps balance the spice and adds a creamy finish.
Calamari
While calamari won’t work for every restaurant (especially if you don’t generally do seafood), it’s an excellent starter for restaurants that are trying to have higher ticket totals. A little bit of deep fried calamari can sell for quite a bit, making for an easy choice at more upscale restaurants. Beer batter or dredge and bread, it’s your choice, calamari is typically served with some lemon and a dipping sauce, making it a popular choice for upscale dining.
Loaded Nachos
Nachos are a classic appetizer for a reason. They’re incredibly quick to make, cost very little, and can be made into a massive shareable plate or a small snack. Even better, they offer a lot of room for expression of your restaurant while still keeping their heart and soul.
Mozzarella Sticks
Mozzarella sticks are an obvious choice for any restaurant with a deep fryer. Mozzarella sticks are especially popular with kids, making them a family-friendly appetizer option.
Devilled Eggs
Deviled eggs require very little effort to make in large batches and can be sold piecemeal or as a full plate, making for a great appetizer that just about everyone will know.
Shrimp Cocktail
Shrimp cocktails are a mainstay appetizer because people love them. While they’re not going to be the best choice for every restaurant, those that can pull them off absolutely should. It’s an incredibly fast pickup time and relatively low-cost appetizer that’s instantly recognizable to a significant portion of the population. Shrimp cocktail is also a refreshing option for a light lunch or as a starter before dinner.
Meat and Cheese Boards
Charcuterie boards are widely accepted as a big-ticket item, meaning you can generally charge a bit more as long as you provide something worth the price. Sourcing high-quality meats and cheeses from a specialty store can elevate the overall experience of your charcuterie board.
Sliders
Sliders are a great appetizer because they can be sold in batches, just like wings. Offer them individually or in sets of two or three. They’re quick, affordable, and easy and you can get creative with them. Turkey sliders are a lean and flavorful alternative to traditional beef, making them a popular choice for health-conscious guests.
Cauliflower Buffalo Bites
Cauliflower Buffalo bites are a great vegetarian alternative for guests that want wings but don’t eat meat. And, when done properly, they’re often better than regular wings! Just be sure to dry roast the cauliflower before deep frying it to ensure a nice, crispy exterior to cling onto that delicious Buffalo sauce. The growing focus on health has made vegetarian appetizers like cauliflower buffalo bites increasingly popular among diners.
How to Incorporate Popular Restaurant Appetizers into Your Menu
Once you’ve decided which appetizers best fit your menu, you can focus on maximizing their impact.
From enticing descriptions and cost-effective pricing to how they appear on your online ordering platform, every detail plays a role in maximizing the impact of restaurant appetizers.
Adjust Portion Sizes for Cost-Effectiveness
Appetizers shouldn’t be built as a meal. Commonly, you’ll see restaurants that load their appetizers as heavily as possible; while that’s great for the customer, it tends to be less great for the business. Larger portions cost more, leading to lower profits on what should be low-cost items.
Instead, appetizers should satiate hungry guests without filling them and, importantly, they shouldn’t be a reasonable option as a meal on their own. Rather, opt to build appetizers that are cost-effective and easily shared between a handful of people. From there, you can encourage guests to either order more appetizers to share or to invest in an entree.
Write Compelling Restaurant Appetizer Menu Descriptions
A mouth-watering photo grabs attention, but it’s the menu descriptions that close the sale. Lead with vivid sensory words (“crispy panko-crusted calamari”), highlight the taste and flavor of your appetizers to entice customers, spotlight signature ingredients or prep methods, and finish with a quick pairing note (“perfect with our house lager”).
Balance Popular Appetizers with Unique Offerings
When adding appetizers to your menu, try to have a combination of familiar offerings that most people will love with a few unique creations that reflect what your restaurant does best. Most restaurants do well with a roughly 60/40 split of popular appetizers like fries, onion rings, or bruschetta alongside a few more creative options. Your unique appetizers will encourage foodies to swing by, while the classics will make it easier for everyone to find something they like.
Price Your Appetizers Appropriately
Getting your menu pricing right is essential to driving profits without turning off price-sensitive guests. The sweet spot lies in balancing portion size, ingredient cost, and perceived value, especially for starters, which are often impulse buys.
Start by calculating the total food cost of each appetizer, accounting for ingredients, garnishes, and prep effort. This strategy. helps ensure you’re covering costs while leaving room for profit.
Use menu engineering and psychology to refine your pricing. Small psychological tweaks, like removing dollar signs, placing higher-priced items first, or using appealing adjectives, can also elevate perceived value and gently guide customer choices.
Offer Your Appetizers on Your Online Menu
If guests can’t find these starters in your online ordering platform, you’re leaving easy revenue on the table. Mirror your in-house appetizer list online with descriptions, photos, and modifiers (dips, extra wings, gluten-free pita, etc.). Use mouth-watering thumbnails and group appetizers first on the mobile menu so they’re impossible to miss.
With ChowNow’s commission-free online ordering, you can showcase your appetizers on your online ordering menu and keep more of the profits. Siciliano’s Pizzaria has used ChowNow’s online ordering for over a decade to grow their digital orders.
Additional Menu Resources
- Restaurant Menu Pricing: How to Set Prices That Boost Profits And Keep Customers
- Restaurant Menu Engineering Techniques to Maximize Profit
- Menu Planning for Restaurants: 4 Ways to Grow Revenue Using Your Online Menu
- How to Write Online Menu Descriptions (with Examples)
- How to Take Menu Photos Like The Pros
Use Takeout to Drive Customer Loyalty
Takeout isn’t just a convenience—it’s a powerful tool for building lasting relationships with your diners. But keeping diners engaged and coming back can be a challenge. In this guide, you’ll learn how to optimize your takeout strategy to encourage repeat business, increase direct orders, and strengthen customer loyalty.
