What’s so Important about the Menu?

Senses:Sight.

I have  been reading a book about the history of “the menu”. It contains illustrations of early menus from the nineteenth century onwards. What struck me was  that the diners must have been young. 

To make the restaurant run well, we all need to read the menu. We need to decide what we want before the waiter returns to our table. It is our job as a “partial worker” of the restaurant (see Newsletter #009). If we fail, we can destroy the efficiency. A sixty-year-old needs 1000 lux of focused light to read a menu accurately. This is according to the American Society of Illuminating Engineers. They need three times as much light as the average twenty-year-old. 1000 Lux is as much light as the brightest office. We need so much light to compensate for our reduced pupil size and thickening lenses.

This does not mean flooding the whole restaurant in light. Lighting needs to be much more precise, with thought given to the task. Lighting must be designed for “reading the menu”, “eating food,”checking the bill” or “relaxing with a drink”. Bright downward facing table  lights can be just as effective if positioned strategically. Lights will need to be shaded and menus illuminated so that light  falls directly on them. I am not sure our older diner could read the nineteenth and early twentieth century menus in the book, by gaslight and early electrical lights.

Reading glasses can correct our ability to focus on a menu. They cannot increase the amount of light. In dim lighting, the level of contrast decreases. Text and background needs to have a high contrast level. This partly depends on the colour of the background and the text. Contrast is measured using a ratio. 1:1 is black text on a black background.  21:1 is the maximum,  black text on a white background. Against a white background the lowest level of contrast comes from green/yellow which has a contrast of 1.1:1. My menus may not have used these combinations but there are many examples of blue print on a grey background.

The contrast needed for older people also depends upon the size and type used. Menus may become larger. Typographers suggest that a contrast of 3:1 is enough with typical headline size text. For regular text they suggest 4.5:1. Type of text is also important. A typeface that has longer, and wider characters is easier to read, especially in low light. Complex characters with strangely shaped letters, need higher levels of contrast. Handwritten menus may be the worst. Typefaces such as “Arial” and “Verdana” meet these requirements. A menu on a computer screen or tablet will help since it is backlit. A credit card machine needs a larger screen and back-lighting especially if the typeface is small. 

Third Age Lighting for the Restaurant

The future restaurant  experience will be a brighter if older people are to navigate the restaurant successfully. If the illuminating engineers get their way, background ambient light needs to increase significantly. They suggest a minimum of three hundred lux for a sixty-year-old. A typical up-market restaurant might have an ambient light level of half of that. This would imply a big increase and a change to the "feel" of the restaurant. This not what the Third Age Consumers are looking for. Changing the ambient lighting may not be the answer.

Paint reflects light to different degrees depending on its colour. Even black reflects five percent of light. Obviously white reflects close to one hundred percent. The “brightness” of paints in dining room will thus  increase as the number of older customers increases. Paints will contain more white pigment. They will be brighter and reflect more colours back to the eye. 

The candles however will have to go. They cause glare to the eyes whose gel is starting to breakdown. The gel is the liquid that fills the eye whose consistency changes with age. Even young people find that the intense light of the candle flame becomes a distraction. You can see people moving candles out of their line of sight. The older you get the more sensitive you are to such glare. Lights need to be shaded to stop it.

Restaurants can provide  better lighting in the pathways leading to tables. This  will allow Third Agers to enjoy the experience without destroying the ambience. If contrast is fading, then it is important to highlight steps. The edges of stairs will need highlighting. This means increased levels of contrast between the edge and its surroundings. This can be done with the colouring of the stairs or with lighting on the edges. The same will be true for doorways which will need to contrast more with the walls. Colours will need to be more solid to avoid being washed out, especially in the case of blue. Pale colours will tend to be perceived as grey and white and hence edges will be more difficult to see.

Light levels will ideally be more consistent. The Third Agers eyes cannot acclimatize as quickly to changes in light level. The muscles that control the iris fade. Their ability to quickly adjust the pupil size to light decays. Washrooms in darker corridors, downstairs will be more difficult to reach. Floor lighting is needed in such settings. The transition to the darkness will have to be more gradual. 

Lighting is already a science. Standards exist for different age groups. Building a “lightscape” for a Third Age consumer only requires creativity. It need not destroy the ambiance. Certainly the Third Age consumer wants that ambiance as much as anyone else. It might cost more but the lighting technology available today is very powerful and prices falling. What is really needed is an understanding of the consumer. In London today there are good examples and some very bad ones. Who will attract the spending power of the over 65’s?

Early restaurants offered huge ranges of food. Their menus were therefore tightly packed with items. They would have been a disaster for any diner over 65. Ofcourse there were very few guests of that age. One of the clearest menus in my book is from April 1912. It was printed on white paper with large block capital lettering. Anyone over 65 would have no trouble reading it. It offers a choice of soups. The main course  choices were:

FILET MIGNONS LILI

SAUTE OF CHICKEN LYONNAISE

VEGITABLE MARROW FARCIS

LAMB, MEAT SAUCE

ROAST DUCKLING, APPLE SAUCE

SIRLIOIN OF BEEF, CHATEAU POTATOES

It is a menu from April 14th,1912. It was the last meal served to the First-Class Passengers on the Titanic. Two menus miraculously survived the disaster, unlike many of the diners. Perhaps my not being able to read the menu is relatively not so important.

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