Hello,
Some printers will not do less than 10,000 4 color menus. I have no need for more than 4-5k per year, and raise my prices yearly. I realize I could find someone who could print less, but the cost per copy would be double. I know many chain restaurants do a priceless menu, and even a few pizza chains. Do any of you do this? What are your thoughts?
I just last August paid for 5K full color, glossy, 100# book paper, trifolded menus for my shop. We paid $425.42 delivered, which comes to .09 per menu. We used www.gotprint.com, and have been delighted with their continued service and product quality.
We started off with no-price menus a couple years back, and customers did not like it. They found it cumbersome to call us to ask for prices all the time and tended not to venture off to try new items, being uncertain of pricing. We made the decision to put pricing in, and assertively use what we get printed so we don’t get stuck with a bunch of out-of-date menu stock.
Matt forgive what you might think is a rude question but how can you be in business and use so few?..Menus are the best marketing tool you have and should be distributed in your market area at least 8 times per year (10 to 12 is even better in my mind) and should go out with most orders unless you are uses box toppers…You need to be very aggressive with menus…
As far as inexpensive printing, I have had a number of my magnet clients tell me www.taradel.com is cheap…They use 60 pound stock so it is light and you get what you pay for…I think they are in VA but there is no contact info on site…
I would definitely go for prices. $.09 per menu for glossy 100# sounds pretty good. I just thought if you tried to print your own, using a laser printer and cheap white paper, you’d be at about $.03 per menu not even including all of your time.
Like Royce mentioned, http://www.teradel.com[/url] has 10,000 full color, 2-sided glossy menus for around $470 which includes shipping. Teradel has the cheapest prices of any company I have found yet. Their minimum is 10,000 though. I haven’t used them yet but a friend of mine has. The quality of their menus are just as good as any other company that I’ve seen. I’ve been using [url=http://www.gotprint.com]http://www.gotprint.com. Their menus are top notch as well. If you want smaller runs go with gotprint. You can order as few as 500 if you want. Their prices are really good too. You can get 5,000 full color, 2-sided glossy menus for around $400 which includes shipping. These are the two companies I recommend.
We have plans of going through about 30-40k menus this year. We mail them, hand them out with orders, put them at beer distributors, video stores, hotels, party supply stores and business visit with them.
Their online quote generator shows that 10,000 4/4 color on 60# gloss text paper, no bleed, tri-fold costs me $605.00 BEFORE shipping. Lighter weight paper is worth noting when comparing pricing. Sure, its .06 per each . . . but gotprint.com sells same qty for $599 with 100# gloss paper. Cheapest may no longer be true for Teradel. I do not know anything of their service or product quality, only the pricing I find online.
In 2006, our corporate advertising company decided we should drop pricing from our menus. When they did a survey, they found that our company’s customers rated pricing as a "non-issue’. Several of the owners, me included, thought this was a stupid idea, but corporate won. We got 1 printing of 10m pieces with no pricing. There were so many customer complaints that they decided we needed to reformat our menus complete with pricing.
Customers were actually calling and e-mailing corporate complaining that there were no prices on our menus. Not to mention the number of complaints the phone people received daily. The customers wanted to be able to figure the approximate cost before they ordered, not be embarrassed and have to start removing items from their order because they couldn’t afford it.
Spend the extra money yearly and put prices on your menu. Use the extras as door hangers, box toppers, hotel advertisements, etc. As was stated above, this is your best piece of advertising.
Nick, I meant to put $570, not $470 for teradel but that is without tri-folding. When I do the online price generator for 10,000 8 1/2" x 11", 4/4 color on 60# gloss text paper, no bleed, tri-fold it says $455 + 174 shipping ($629). Gotprint.com is $599 for 10,000 and the shipping to my location (NY) is $208. So in total it costs me $807 which is $178 more than teradel. I haven’t ordered from teradel yet but a friend of mine bought flyers for his business. They are just as nice as gotprints but a little thinner. Their turnaround time was really good too. He said he got them within a week.
I just realized what the difference is our price lookup might be. My price quotes are using my own design instead of them designing it. I always design my own menus.
Ouch!
Pricing being a “non-issue” is one thing… means your prices aren’t a concern. Not printing prices is a whole other issue.
I can do 5,000 8.5" x 11" 60# flyers , process front and back for $248 (plus shipping). 5,000 of just 1-color on the front and 1-color on the back would come to $114.50. Price breaks at 10,000 , 20,000 , 35,000 , 50,000 and up. We can also do 11 x 17 size.
Keep in mind though that 60# paper is light weight. We work a lot with the newspaper industry which is who we market this product to. These flyers are like the inserts in the middle of your newspaper that coupons are printed on. If that works for you… I’d be happy to send samples. Anyone who is interested, just PM me.
Oh - and we’d be happy to help with the design just like when we do Post-its…