Why Reducing the Menu is Good for Restaurant Business?
It has now become the trend in fine-dining restaurants is to have menus limited to a smaller number of items and to rotate them based on a few things, such as the time of the year, what seems to be selling, New entrees the Chef has fallen in love with, what’s available from vendors. More restaurants are moving to this concept, which emphasizes doing what you do best and eliminating the extras and try to control all the things and keep them as easy as possible because it’s not necessary that your cheap upright freezers will always help you to keep everything. The trend has been away from trying to be everything to everyone, and instead intensifying the message and concept of the restaurant. This has worked for restaurants around the country, and could be the winning recipe for your restaurant in the future.
1.KEEP IT SIMPLE:
stick yourself with the simple is great life advice, and it’s becoming increasingly great restaurant operation advice. Simple menus help focus the kitchen on wow! entrees, those dishes that keep guests returning with an idea of what they want. They make it more possible for a restaurant to be known for an individual item or concept, and cultivate creating a market niche when doesn’t already exist. Keeping it simple has worked for steakhouse concepts, southern comfort food restaurants, and gourmet pizza joints, because people tend to know what they’re getting before they leave the house. A great, simplified menu coupled with superior atmosphere and high quality service implies that each entry will be excellent, and ensures guests that a smaller menu improves quality, instead of limiting options.
2. IMPROVE THE KITCHEN:
Going with the reduction in the menu can streamline the entire kitchen by reducing inventory, establishing more secure, less-fluctuating costs, and helping to eliminate waste. It can re-direct the focus of the Chef and Sous onto whats really important: developing a great kitchen staff that produces consistently great food. Smaller menus make inventory counting quicker, and produce more controllable costs that make it easier to determine the source of high food costs.
When wastes are eliminated by a downsized menu, it becomes clearer that food costs can be controlled with caution and portion control. This is hard to do in a kitchen trying to be all things to all people. But the time when menu is simple, kitchen managers have an easier time mastering the basics of efficiency and cost management.
3. GIVE IT A NAME:
Concerned about reaching the same number of guests when downsizing the menu? Give it a name. by providing names to the menus has worked in different restaurant concepts around the country and giving people something to talk about when they talk about your restaurant. There are examples everywhere:
X items under $X: This works by pulling standard entrees from the regular menu and highlighting their cost.
Best of Locals: A special kind of menu that incorporates local vendors who offer fresh ingredients. Brand tie-in is a great way to reduce costs.
A catchy name helps operators market their brand where it counts most: in their own building. A menu which is successful that has a four-word-or-less name gives guests something to say when they’re recommending the restaurant to friends and family.
