Have you ever been to a restaurant and opened your menu to find somebody else's gravy sticking the pages together? Wouldn't protective menu holders have been nice so that the gravy could have been easily wiped from the menu before it was handed to you? Restaurant owners may not realize it, but protective menu holders are an investment that will not only save them money in the long run but will keep customers from never coming back. And, they can be an excellent way to promote a business.

There are several kinds of promotional, protective menu holders to choose from. For small menus, such as desert menus and separate beverage menus, hard, acrylic menu holders will set them nicely on the tables. For book style menus, plastic menu covers are essential. They will keep the paper menus clean and pleasant for your customers to look at because the plastic wipes off easily.

From a customer's point of view, there is nothing worse than a dirty restaurant. What is the first thing they see when they sit down at the table? Your hostess hands them their branded menus. If the menu is dirty because they don't have protective menu holders on them, or because the hostess didn't bother to wipe them off, then the first impression that your customers have is that the rest of the restaurant is dirty, too. They may not even order food at this point, or if they do, they are not likely to come back.

Getting the hostess to wipe off the menus is an easy fix. Hostesses can be replaced. Getting your customers to come back isn't quite as easy, nor are they so easily replaced. There is another problem with allowing your customers to leave unhappy because of their dirty menus, too.

You've heard the analogy that if one person is pleased with your restaurant they will tell three people. But if one person is displeased with your restaurant, they will tell ten people. It is human nature to complain and want to tell others about our bad experiences. We all do it. They will not only tell people that their menu was dirty, they will tend to exaggerate and tell them that the whole restaurant was filthy and to never go there because they will probably end up sick.

Those ten people who were told about the filthy restaurant that will make them sick will then tell a few more people that your restaurant was shut down by the health department because your kitchen is so dirty that it put their friend in the hospital. You see how these stories escalate? The next thing you know, you're not getting any business. All because you didn't use protective menu holders.

You can see how promotional, plastic menu holders are a good investment and without using protective menu holders you could actually lose business. They are a good investment in another, less dramatic way, too. Plastic menu holders protect your paper menus, and therefore protect you from having to constantly replace them. You know how expensive it is to have your branded menus printed. But if you want to keep your customers coming back, and telling good stories about your restaurant, you will have to do it, unless you make use of protective menu holders, that is.