MEET THE CHIEF MENU SURGEON

Michael Bell

Founder & Chief Menu Surgeon
Menu Surgeon Marketing

I have have spent more than 25 years helping businesses communicate with their customers—and roughly 20 of those years learning how restaurants can use menus, photography, marketing and technology to perform better.

I didn’t set out to become a Menu Surgeon.

In fact, I wanted to be a journalist.

Somehow that journey took me through advertising agencies, electric signs, Hurricane Katrina, two of America’s largest foodservice companies, thousands of restaurant dishes, countless menus and one very useful stethoscope.

Looking back, it makes more sense than you might think.

I Wanted to Tell Stories

I went to college in the 1990s because I loved writing and wanted to become a journalist.

I worked on my college newspaper and yearbook while also, somewhat accidentally, working for the university webmaster. Journalism taught me how to write, interview people, edit copy, create headlines and communicate complicated ideas clearly. Along the way I learned photography, videography, desktop publishing, digital illustration and a relatively new tool called Photoshop.

I started using Photoshop around version 2, which probably qualifies me for some kind of digital senior-citizen discount.

Secretly, I wanted to be the Clark Kent side of my favorite superhero—working in a bustling big-city newsroom and chasing the next story.

But by the end of college, newspapers were already struggling with the disruption caused by the Internet. Internships were disappearing and journalists were being laid off.

So I made a gamble. I shifted more of my education toward graphic design and web design.

It turned out to be a pretty good gamble.

From Advertising to Signs

After college, I landed a graphic-design position with a large New Orleans advertising agency, creating advertising layouts and websites for its clients.

A couple of years later, I moved to a regional electric-sign company, designing indoor and outdoor signage for everyone from Gulf Coast casinos and major corporations to small mom-and-pop businesses.

I knew I loved graphic design.

What I hadn’t found yet was THE THING I wanted to use it for.

Then Hurricane Katrina changed everything.

Katrina devastated my hometown of Slidell in 2005. I relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, to stay with family, expecting the move to be temporary.

Then one afternoon I was talking with my mother in the kitchen where she worked, and her Sysco sales representative happened to walk in.

Creative Design + Amazing Food

The sales representative overheard that I was a graphic designer and told me Sysco’s Lincoln operation was looking for someone to help develop its menu-design department.

She took the only copy of my résumé I had with me.

Within days, I had an interview and a job, in Lincoln, NE.

And that’s where everything changed.

I already knew I loved graphic design. But combining creative design with restaurants and amazing food was different.

I’d finally found my thing.

A Menu Isn’t Just a Design Project

Sysco’s corporate office in Houston was using the Lincoln operation as a test case for developing menu-design and printing departments that could eventually be implemented throughout the company.

I became deeply involved in figuring out how that system would actually work.

I worked with corporate employees to develop the handbook for operating a menu-design and printing department. I helped establish standards for computers, software, printers, paper inventories, photography equipment and production procedures.

I also established a file-sharing network that allowed Sysco menu designers around the country to access and adapt menu designs that had already been created. At one point, I estimate that more than 70% of the menu templates available through that system were designs I’d created.

Eventually, Sysco was flying me around the country to work with other design teams and train designers to become better and more efficient at their jobs. But one of the most important things I learned at Sysco had very little to do with graphic design.

Our menu services were connected to the sales side of the business. I worked with salespeople to tie menu services to specific purchasing goals restaurants needed to achieve before qualifying for complimentary menu design and printing.

I began learning to see a restaurant menu as a business tool—not an art project.
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Taking What I’d Learned—and Improving It

In 2010, US Foods hired me specifically to duplicate the success I’d been part of creating at Sysco.

This time, I was starting from scratch.

I began as the operation’s only designer and printing-production person. My boss handled the business-development and financial side of the department, while I was responsible for developing the creative and production processes that would allow the operation to grow. Having already seen what worked—and what didn’t—I was able to avoid many of the early mistakes we’d encountered at Sysco.

We developed a leaner model.

Rather than putting separate designers and production teams at individual locations, we made Kansas City the central hub. Our growing team could design and produce restaurant menus for multiple US Foods territories and then use the company’s existing trucking network to distribute the finished menus.

I initially handled menu-design work for the Kansas City and Omaha territories, covering restaurants across large portions of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa, along with parts of neighboring states. As we brought on more artists and production personnel, the operation expanded into additional territories across the Midwest, South and Mountain states.

I trained the new designers and production personnel and helped coordinate our work to maximize efficiency and profitability.

Coming Home

After years in corporate America, I was burned out. I loved what I did. I had a good career. But I worked constantly, moved around and wasn’t putting down roots anywhere.

Losing a younger cousin in 2012 brought me together with family members I hadn’t seen in years and forced me to think about what I actually wanted my life to look like. At the end of that year, I left US Foods and came home to Louisiana.

I got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family for the first time in a very long time.

In early 2013, I went to work for a small local marketing agency. Professionally, I had another skill set to learn. I’d spent most of my career as a back-office employee. Customers were brought to me, and I worked on their projects.

I’d never really had to sell myself.

I didn’t know how to walk into a room full of strangers and give an elevator pitch. I didn’t know how to network. I hadn’t learned how to develop referral relationships with professionals in completely different industries.

So I started learning.

From Back-Office Designer to Networking Student.

I joined the Noon Networkers (a local business networking and referrals group) in March 2013. I began volunteering with local nonprofits, attending business events and building connections to the community I’d left years earlier.

The relationships I developed through networking became instrumental in establishing my reputation as a restaurant and menu specialist.

From February 2013 through March 2017, I worked as the primary graphic designer, web designer, logo designer and photographer for a local online marketing agency. I met directly with clients to discuss their print, online and video marketing needs.

But restaurants remained my specialty.

My work had evolved well beyond making menus look better. I was consulting with independent restaurant owners about menu engineering, food costs and profitability—using design as one part of a much larger strategy for helping their restaurants perform better.

For the first time, all the pieces of my career were beginning to come together.

Hanging My Own Shingle

In January 2017, life gave me another unexpected course correction. I checked myself into the hospital with a life-threatening illness, underwent emergency surgery and spent two weeks hospitalized followed by another month recovering at home.

A brush with death has a way of making you reconsider how you’re spending your time. I realized I didn’t want to spend the next chapter of my career using everything I’d learned to build someone else’s company. I wanted to find out what I could build myself.

And I wasn’t doing it alone.

The relationships I’d spent the previous several years building through my local networking group rallied around me.

My referral partners encouraged me to make the leap. The CPA in our group helped me register the company, obtain my tax ID and work through the paperwork. In March 2017, after more than 15 years as a professional designer and roughly a decade specializing in restaurant menus and foodservice, I finally hung my own shingle.

The Menu Surgeon was officially in.

Where Did the Menu Surgeon Name Come From?

I knew I wanted a business name people would remember. For decades, American television had been filled with police shows and medical dramas. Everybody understood the characters and the language. I wanted a brand that could tap into something people already recognized while creating enough curiosity to make them ask what I actually did.

I considered calling myself the Menu Detective or the Menu Doctor.

Doctor ultimately made more sense. The work I was already doing with restaurants involved examining problems, analyzing information and recommending solutions. Unfortunately, the obvious “Menu Doctor” domain names were already taken.

Then my mother—who had worked as a registered nurse for many years—suggested something better:

“Call yourself a Surgeon.”

Her reasoning was simple. A surgeon isn’t a general practitioner. A surgeon is a specialist. And, as if it was meant to be, MenuSurgeon.com was available.

I never looked back.

That night, I designed the logo around a medical caduceus reimagined with a knife, fork and spoon. Then came the white physician’s coat, black scrubs and red stethoscope. The first time I attended a community business expo dressed as “The Surgeon,” people kept stopping me to ask:

“What exactly is a Menu Surgeon?” Perfect.

For the record, becoming the Menu Detective would have given me an excuse to film myself sliding across the hood of my “Menu Mobile.”

Some sacrifices had to be made.

Starting Over

Starting Menu Surgeon didn’t mean taking four years of established agency accounts with me.

I had a non-compete agreement with my former employer, which meant I couldn’t continue working with the clients I’d developed relationships with during the previous four years. The one exception was restaurant menu design and food photography—specialized services at the agency that only I had provided.

Even with those restaurant clients, I had to walk away from their website and social media work. So I started Menu Surgeon with a very short list of loyal restaurant customers, a home office and a referral network I’d spent the previous four years building.

Then I networked like my life depended on it.

I worked nights. I worked weekends. I even worked in the conference room of my local library, just to get out of my home office for a few precious hours. And in those early days, I accepted plenty of projects that often had nothing to do with restaurant menus because building a business sometimes means doing the work that’s available while you’re working toward the business you actually want.

One of the restaurants that put its support behind my new company was Peck’s Seafood. I’d worked with Peck’s previously and had been talking with them about social media, but they’d never purchased the service. Once I opened Menu Surgeon, they put their support behind my new business and became Menu Surgeon’s first social media customer.

Slowly, one project and one referral at a time, I built a small group of loyal, long-term customers.

Those relationships became the foundation Menu Surgeon Marketing was built on.

Becoming the Menu Guy.

In the early years, I networked everywhere.

I visited business networking groups throughout the region, attended Chamber events and business after-hours gatherings, spoke to Rotary Clubs and Knights of Columbus groups, and gave presentations teaching business owners how restaurant menus actually work.

I also developed relationships with people who were already working with restaurants—credit-card processors, members of the Louisiana Restaurant Association and even local Sysco and US Foods sales representatives.

When one of their restaurant customers needed help with a menu, I wanted the Menu Surgeon to be the person they thought of.

And I made myself pretty difficult to forget.

I wore my black scrubs and red stethoscope everywhere. Networking events. Business meetings. Community functions. The supermarket. Even church picnics.

It wasn’t unusual for someone to ask, “What exactly is a Menu Surgeon?” That was precisely the question I wanted them to ask.

Every introduction created another relationship. Every successful restaurant project could lead to another restaurant.

Slowly, “the guy in the scrubs” became known around the area as The Menu Guy—someone restaurant owners and their other business partners could call when they needed help.

Putting Down Roots

Somewhere along the way, something else happened.

I became part of my community again.

In 2018, I participated in a local leadership program (Leadership Northshore) alongside roughly 20 other community leaders and professionals. We traveled throughout our parish and Southern Louisiana learning about local government, education, nonprofits and the communities we served while working together on community-service projects.

I was the only small-business owner in the group. The other participants represented local government, libraries, law enforcement, fire departments, education, ministry and other parts of the community.

Participating required taking time away from a young business that couldn’t always afford to lose me for the day.

It was worth it.

I had come home because I wanted connections to family, friends and community again. I was finally building them.

I met my wife in 2018, about a year after starting Menu Surgeon. We married in 2020, and in 2024 we bought our first home.

And thirteen years after nervously joining Noon Networkers because I didn’t know how to network, I’m still there—only now I’m one of the grizzled veterans helping younger business people learn some of the same lessons the group taught me.

More than a decade ago, I came home because I realized I was tired of moving through life without putting down roots.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I’d grown them.

Still Learning. Still Building. Still Hungry.

When I look at Menu Surgeon today, I’m proud of the work I’ve done and the skills I’ve developed. I’m proud of the restaurants and other businesses I’ve been able to help. But I’m probably proudest of the relationships I’ve built along the way—with clients, referral partners, friends, family and the community I call home.

Menu Surgeon Marketing turned nine years old in 2026. I’m still learning.

Technology keeps changing. Restaurant marketing keeps changing. Menus keep changing. And that’s part of what keeps this interesting.

I’m continuing to build Menu Surgeon into a business that uses everything I’ve learned to help restaurant owners build stronger businesses of their own—while creating something that can support my family, my clients and my community for many years to come.

There’s plenty of work left to do.

Good thing the Surgeon is in.

Have a Restaurant Problem You’d Like Me to Look At?

You don’t need to know which Menu Surgeon service you need before we talk.

Tell me what’s working, what’s frustrating you and what you’d like your restaurant to accomplish.

We’ll start there.
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