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Something Pretty in Soda Menus

"We have hit on a new idea regarding soda menus which I consider a winner. In the first place, we are having made a handsome set of menu folders with a front cover in colors showing a pretty young woman drinking soda out of one of our glasses. It is reproduced from a photograph. The lady is very comme il faut and charming to a degree. The color work is exquisite. Now the main idea is this. Let any man go into a fashionable restaurant, and as he seats himself the waiter slaps down a bill of fare of four or six pages as big as an old Brown's Bible. The pages are closely printed. As the French say, the man is stupefied. He is appalled at this array of good things to eat, and if he loses his nerve will end in ordering an omelet. "It is the same way with soda menus. Long lists of fancy names confuse a customer. A few would entice him. There's the point. In our new menus we give but a few drinks and a few words of explanation about each. Say six drinks. The next day we change the contents of the menu, and so each day until our whole list is covered. A regular customer will thus learn about everything we serve by degrees without losing heart and appetite. "Nor do I approve of huge glittery lists, framed, beside the fountain. Usually they are artistic abominations. They mean nothing and no one ever looks at them. Their style is similar to the decorations of a bar.. A dainty menu is the thing, but make it short. Life itself is short. But the phases of the soda business are not. There is always something to be learned by study, reflection, and, most of all, observation." The Language of the Soda Water Advertisement.

The language of the soda water advertisement should cause but little trouble. The words chosen should convey the idea to the public that your soda water is always ice-cold, that your fruit juices are fresh and taste just right, and that your fountain is always neat and clean, but if these words do not fit the kind of soda water you dispense, don't print them. People are eager to read about and anxious to drink good soda water. They perhaps expect a little more from the man who advertises his fountain beverages than from the one who does not. The disappointment is therefore all the greater when they do not come up to the expectation which the advertisement has raised. The soda water business is being hurt by some people who use too many adjectives in their advertisements and too little ice in neir fountains. The rule to follow in advertising soda water is not unlike the ancient recipe for cooking a hare. In one case it is. First catch your hare; in the other, first have good soda water. If you have the latter you can hardly fail in advertising it truthfully, enthusiastically and effectively. Soda Water Prospects.