Who am I to be giving business advice? I’ve never written or said this before:

I might be the most successful business consultant in history.  I have had nearly 2,000 clients over sixty years.  They have all recommended me to each other.  In a few cases of large and very large companies I was recommended by their existing consultants. 

I have published a dozen books, several by Random House and Nolo Press.  One by Nolo, Marketing Without Advertising, is the third largest selling book on business in the English language excluding textbooks.  Marketing Without Advertising made it to the 8th edition before we (Salli Rasberry and I) stopped revising it.

In terms of restaurants I was the first consultant to Buttercup in Berkeley, the origin of the Berkeley foodie world. Suze Orman was a waitress there but I never met her.

I founded Green’s Restaurant 43 years ago and am still one of the owners. Green’s was the first high-end vegetarian restaurant in America. Still going strong.  I was the main consultant to the first Victoria Station restaurant which became a chain of over 100 national restaurants.

I also advised the board of Starbucks on how to open their first and most successful coffee shop in Shibuya Tokyo; their first shop outside the U.S.

Preamble

That is the preamble to giving advice to all the restaurant owners and operators in America. 

Advice

My advice: unless you are primarily a vegetarian destination, you should consider having a separate yellow menu with all your vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free menu items.  Why?

Three reasons. 

• First, the number of young people who try to be vegetarians is large and growing. 
• Second, they prefer to be treated respectfully and that means that having footnotes (V, Vgn, Gf.) on the menu is not adequate. 
• Third, even in a dining party of four or more, one or two are vegetarians and the group increasingly defers to the food tastes of the minority.

Why a separate yellow menu?  Yellow highway signs have the meaning of ‘Notice.”  No other reason.