Six Reasons Why You Should Simplify Your Menu
What if I told you, you could increase your customer count, improve your customer experience, streamline your kitchen operation, reduce labour costs, reduce your training costs AND, increase your profits by doing just one thing?
That really would be something to take a look at!
When it comes to menus, less is usually more; and, now more than ever the most profitable menus are going to be those orientated around brevity.
I’ve written previously about the importance of taking a strategic approach to your menu design, but today I’m going to talk you through six reasons why a short menu will be more profitable for your business.
Let’s dive in and look at the six reasons why you should simplify your menu to improve your profitability. . .
1. You Can’t Be Everything to Everyone
There are as many customer preferences out there as there are customers, so it’s impossible to meet everybody’s needs. By doing so you will be diluting your offering and confusing your brand identity.
You’re much better to truly understand your target market and what they are looking for, and then craft your menu around that. –Be known for doing a few things well.
2. Streamline Customer Ordering
Reducing the number of menu items will actually improve your customers’ experience.
Customers can easily be overwhelmed by long and complex menus, which can significantly slow down the ordering process and cause unnecessary bottlenecks.
Worst of all, if your business offers counter service only, slow-ordering customers will cause queues to form behind them, which may discourage other customers away from your business.
3. Less Stock Holding
Unless there’s a lot of crossover with the ingredients used in your dishes, the more items you have on your menu the more ingredients you will need to hold in stock.
The cost of all this stock adds up pretty fast and increases the amount of working capital sitting on your shelves and fridges.
In addition to this, your ordering process will be more complex, you’ll be dealing with more suppliers and your monthly stocktaking process will take a whole lot longer to complete.
4. Streamlining The Kitchen
Quite simply; the fewer menu items, the less prep required.
Not only this but reducing your offering will streamline virtually every aspect of your kitchen operation and most importantly will reduce your wastage.
5. Reduce Training Requirements
Your kitchen staff need to be absolute experts on how to prepare every item on your menu in order for it to be served to perfection every single time.
If you consider how long it takes to train expertise and perfection on each item, and then multiply that by the number of items on your menu, you’ll quickly see the benefits of keeping your menu tight.
6. Better Metrics
You need to know your numbers. This means keeping an eye on your ingredient costs (which change over time), your food-prep labour costs and your sales analytics. The more items on your menu, the more complex this challenge becomes.
IN SUMMARY . . .
The benefits of a lean and well-considered menu are substantial and have a positive impact on virtually every part of your P&L including, revenue, profitability, wage costs and food costs, all at the same time as providing a better experience for your customers.
You now just need to figure out what menu items to keep and what to discard; this is where working with an experienced restaurant consultant can help. We can help identify what items are driving your business forward, and which are holding it back.