10+ fall menu ideas for restaurants who want to go local

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It’s hard to believe that decorative gourd season is not far off, but it’s true — fall is on the way. That means restaurants get to come up with new fall menu ideas. Fall restaurant menu ideas can entice customers old and new to your tables for some good old fashioned fall flavor.

There’s a lot of room to play with ideas that riff on classics. And while there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to comfort food, autumn provides a lot of room for tinkering with new fall recipes.

So let’s take a look at some ideas when it comes to fall fare on your restaurant menu, from appetizers to mains. But first: Why go seasonal?

Seasonal sense: Why going seasonal works

From a business perspective, adding seasonal items can be an excellent maneuver. First and perhaps most important: Diners love it. A whopping 59% of customers say they’re more likely to purchase an item if it’s described as seasonal. An additional 49% and 39% said they think seasonal items are tastier and healthier, respectively.

Going seasonal also follows a broad industry trend towards locally sourced, sustainable food. Produce that’s in season is usually cheaper and fresher, which leads to lower food costs, higher profits, and better taste.

Going as local as possible also gives you ample social media marketing opportunities. Got the freshest pumpkins around? Tag the local farm or supplier you’re getting it from to let customers know how serious you are about freshness and your local community.

A solid option for integrating a seasonal menu—especially when you’re just testing the waters—is to offer a prix fixe menu with all-seasonal items. That way, you can narrow down your choice of ingredients and not overwhelm your inventory with perishables, all while offering something new and interesting.

The fall menu idea cornerstones

There’s a good reason there are well-known fall cornerstones: It’s traditional harvest time, and that’s when a wide variety of foods become widely available. So while our modern interpretations of a hearty harvest may be somewhat detached from farm life, the origin of classic staples is pretty clear.

What kind of staples are we talking about for fall? All kinds of fruits and veggies, for example. Take squash: butternut squash, acorn squash, brussels sprouts, and pumpkins can find their way into all sorts of recipes. Sweet potatoes are equally appropriate in many cases. Apple-flavored anything can be a hit. This takes us to a certain point about flavor and flavor expectations.

Fall flavors are comforting, earthy, nutty, savory, and sweet but not overly sweet. These flavors offer themselves as a natural turning of the seasons and a contrast to the bright, punchy, citrusy flavors of summer and a pleasant passing period on the way to the more hearty, warming flavors of winter.

So, no matter what genre of cuisine your restaurant falls into, you can find a way to make fall classics work for you. Of course, the fresher and more local you can go the better, so talk to your food supplier about what they expect to be an exceptionally good deal this year. A great way to ensure freshness is to create a seasonal menu. It can either work as an addition to your regular menu or replace the regular menu entirely—it depends what your audience expects.

Fall salad ideas

Fall is a great time to introduce some fresh new salads to your menu. Here are just a few ideas to get your appetizer engine started.

Consider a cranberry and parmesan salad with fresh, crispy arugula and seasonal nuts like pecans. Toss it with an apple cider vinaigrette and voila, you’ve got yourself a great start to a fall dinner.

You can swap out any of the key ingredients in this salad for something that’s fresher and more readily available should you need. So, if fresh cranberries are hard to come by, swap them out for apples. If parmesan is expensive, look to goat cheese. If arugula is in short supply, look to kale or any other fresh green. The key is flexibility and freshness, since fresh always tastes better.

A yummy vegan option is a chickpea, acorn squash, and kale salad. Roast the squash with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs, toss the ingredients together with some pomegranate, dried berries, and nuts, your choice of vinaigrette (a sesame oil vinaigrette would work well). Now you’ve got something that may make even non-vegans consider veganism.

Fall soup ideas

With temperatures falling, hot soups and stews are set to make a roaring comeback. If you find yourself with an abundance of squash, here’s a great time to let them shine.

A hearty butternut squash soup is hard to beat, for example. Butternut squash roasted with shallots combined with aromatic herbs like sage and rosemary and simmered in stock of your choice makes for a wonderful start to a meal.

Don’t neglect the legumes, either! Lentils remain underappreciated in many places in the world, and that can change. If you want to look for fine lentil soup recipes, you can go the French route and cook it with onions, celery, carrots, smoked pork belly, and herbs.

Or, you can go the Indian route, cooking lentils with ginger, garlic, chilies, fenugreek, mustard seed, cumin, and your favorite curry blend. Either way, lentils are an excellent way to warm bellies and please palates—with the added benefit of being exceptionally affordable.

Fall main course ideas

There are many, many books written about fall dinner ideas. If you’re able to read this, you’ve likely had many fall meals yourself! If we were to do a “Family Feud” style survey asking people on the street what weeknight fall dinners they thought of, you’d probably hear chicken pot pie, slow-cooker beef stew, and mashed potatoes, for example.

While comfort foods are classic for a reason, you don’t have to wholly reinvent your menu. Really, what you serve will revolve around your establishment. If you’re running an Italian restaurant, you’re simply using Italian fall classics or adding local ingredients to your menu. There’s no need to kick out well-selling pasta dishes—but you can certainly find a way to slip in some acorn squash to give it a certain seasonal flair.

This trend can continue in all sorts of ways. Serving gnocchi? Serve it with a butternut squash cream sauce, topped with fresh rosemary. Lasagna? Layer some pumpkin in there with the ricotta for that earthy, mellow goodness. For down-home cooking, a comforting mac ’n’ cheese can become a fancier butternut squash mac ’n’ cheese—something adults can eat while still feeling adult-y. You could also try a cream sauce with sage, prosciutto, and fresh pumpkin. Remove the prosciutto and, ta-da, it’s vegetarian!

For a meat-based comfort dish, go for braised meatballs. They can be served with sweet potato and squash puree and/or roasted seasonal greens, for example. The meat in the meatballs and the flavors can be swapped out to suit any restaurant or fit any theme. Going Moroccan? Use lamb, or a mixture of beef and lamb, and go with a Moroccan spice blend. You can steer this dish Sichuan-style instead, using a combination of lean and fatty minced pork, and leaning into Chinese-friendly greens like bok choy on the side. The upshot here: Minced meat is exceptionally versatile and high-profit, and meatballs are almost always a crowd pleaser.

Fall cocktail ideas

Naturally, restaurants will want to consider updating their cocktail menu to include new offerings. And sure, you can do a classic pumpkin spice everything, but you’re here for new ideas, right? Here are some ideas for your bartenders to show off.

Let’s take one we’ll call the Autumn Breeze Martini. It’s like a crisp fall breeze in a glass. It’s simple, too: a mix of apple cider, bourbon, and cinnamon. Without overcomplicating things, it gets the message across just right. If you feel like adding a tiny leaf-shaped stirrer to it, you will win autumn enthusiasts over.

Next let’s look at a twist on a classic: the Harvest Mule. While a Moscow Mule is known and loved, some ingredients can be swapped out to make it more autumn-ish. Replace the traditional vodka for some spiced rum, and combine that with ginger beer and apple cider. Just like that, you’ve got another drink that’s simply autumnal magic. A cinnamon stick as a stirrer and garnish makes the presentation complete.

Finally, sangria doesn’t have to just be for the summer. Behold: the Caramel Apple Sangria, which takes a childhood treat and turns it into a boozy delight. This cocktail combines white wine, apple cider, caramel vodka, and fresh apples. It’s like drinking a liquid caramel apple, minus the stickiness. An apple slice floating on top adds a bit of delightful crunch as well as a presentational flair.

Everything falls into place

Savory aromas are wafting from the kitchen, forks and spoons are scraping on plates, diners are chatting, servers are delivering and taking plates, and there’s laughter here and there. This is just a classic scene of a fall weeknight dinner at a restaurant, and it’s one many cherish.

Customers will cherish it even more if your service is exceptional from start to finish. Imagine the whole aspect of the customer journey, from finding your restaurant to making a reservation, showing up, being served and eating, and paying. What if it all went just perfectly?

We think it can, with Yelp Guest Manager. From the first point of contact, like finding your restaurant while browsing on Yelp or making a reservation on the Yelp app, customers will find interacting with you easy. Guest Manager allows for completely customizable floor management and syncs with some of the industry’s favorite third-party delivery apps and point-of-sale systems to make life easier for your front of house staff. And your servers can run it all from a single tablet.

Before you know it, the holiday rush will be here—reach out to us for a free demo before the craziness kicks in. We’ll show you around and help you figure out what’s right for you. Your restaurant’s tools should feel as cozy as a warm fall dinner.