What Makes a Good Menu?

How many of you have been to The Cheesecake Factory? Besides the showcase of dozens of decadent desserts, there's one vivid memory I can't get out of my head. Waiting staff leading us to our table and handing out these thick, heavy, laminated, spiral-bound booklets of dozens of pages of tempting options, leaving my family even more confused and indecisive about what we want to eat. Aka, our MENUS. 250 items, 20+ pages.

Take successful American burger chain, Shake Shack, on the other hand. They present a reductionistic, simple menu of a handful of burgers, hot dogs, sides, and drinks/shakes. It shouldn't take someone in their right mind more than 2 minutes to figure out what they want to eat, and if they're not in the mood for some classic American burgers and fries? Tough luck. Gotta move on to the next restaurant.

Neither of these menu models are wrong, but their stark differences pose a fascinating question: how exactly should a restaurant's menu be constructed? How long? How many items? What variety? What messaging and branding? If you're a restauranteur, chances are that these are questions you've already thought of and carefully crafted your menu around. However, changes such as demographics, societal norms, competition, macro factors, and consumer preferences can drastically change how effective your menus are in adapting to the modern and future consumer.

If you're a restauranteur thinking about changing your menu or a foodie just curious about restaurant mechanics, here's our framework on how to design the right menu for the right restaurant.

RESTAURANT AMBITION

Before getting in the weeds of menus, it's important to start with the big picture in mind: what do you seek to accomplish with your restaurant? Here are some of the major ambitions that restaurants seek to accomplish:

• Casual dining option

• Affordable and accessible food

• Socially vibrant experience

• Authentic cultural and foodie showcase

• Fine dining

Based on the overall ambition, restaurants then tailor their business model to meet a target customer group. For example, socially vibrant experiences are best-suited for more affluent, younger populations in an urban area. Casual dining options are great for the general public because they don't have a strong preference about where/what they eat. The menu is simply one component of the business model. Menus should be aligned with 1) the restaurant's overall ambition, 2) the target customer group, and 3) other components of the business model.

MENU LENGTH + ASSORTMENT

Before getting into this, it's important to recognize the elephant in the room: supply chain and prices. After COVID, immense global inflation, and the Russia-Ukraine war, food costs have skyrocketed across most restaurants, and it's become more difficult to source ingredients and maintain inventories as usual. As a result, restaurants have been pressured to trim menus and readjust their items.

This can be a good opportunity for restaurants to reassess which items they feature on their menus. Here's a helpful framework to narrow down items and menu length:

• High-popularity + high margins - the no-brainers to keep. Works well for the business, the customers, and the wallet!

• High-popularity + low margins - still a high priority to retain loyal customers, but it's worth investigating why the margins are low and if you can do anything to change your sourcing/inventory with the margins.

• Low-popularity + high margins - these are the hidden gems. If they're not as popular currently, how can the menu be rearranged to emphasize these items? Perhaps combo options? These are the items that you'll want to experiment with and get in front of customers as much as you can.

• Low-popularity + low margins - bye-bye. Sometimes, we just keep things going because "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But it's important to periodically review popularity and margins for your menu items to remove these.

Once you've categorized your menu items in these groups, it's helpful to go back to step 1: the overall ambition. Does your ambition have an implicit goal of providing customers with endless options? Or do you seek to provide a more niche, gourmet selection that showcases your cuisine? Perhaps an ever-changing, dynamic experience that adapts to seasons and chef preferences? The restaurant's overall ambition should guide the menu length and assortment you choose. We're not here to prescribe a formula or ratio for the # of appetizers, drinks, etc. that should be on your menu.

EXAMPLES

Antico's Pizza in Atlanta, GA

Good - My absolute favorite pizza restaurant in the US (and top 3-4 pizza restaurants in the world) is Antico's Pizza in Atlanta, GA. One of the most illustrative parts of the restaurant's success lies in how well its menu is crafted, complementing its overall strategic ambition. When walking into an Antico's location, you can immediately tell that their primary goal is to bring a taste of pure Italy to America. You can see chefs tossing large Neapolitan pies, using the finest of ingredients sourced from Italy, and throwing them into a traditional imported wood-fired oven for 90 seconds. The menu is seamlessly cut from the same sentiment, boasting a tight selection of traditional Italian pizzas. Best of all, they do NOT accept any customizations. No thick Detroit style pizzas, thin crust NY-style slices, or any funky pineapple or BBQ chicken combos that Americans do. Just pure traditional Neapolitan elegance at its finest.

From the menu to the restaurant operations to the interior décor and the chefs themselves, it's easy to spot the harmony in Antico's Pizza. No surprise that they've been expanding to several locations over the past decade and bringing Neapolitan pizza to the suburbs of Atlanta.

Bad -  There's a local Indian restaurant that I'll leave unnamed since I'm picking on it. Its overall ambition is to provide an elegant, upscale dining venue that spotlights Indian cuisine as it is. It successfully attracts its target customer group: parties that want to enjoy a fancy night out. However, the menus paint a different story. The tiny takeout paper menus they've been handing out since COVID are heavily misaligned with their overall ambition and customer group. Even the menu sections and descriptions don't fit into their overall goals, as they don't do the best job of providing relatable descriptions to their target customers. Lastly, the menu isn't quite designed in a way that complements the food that the restaurant provides. Don't get me wrong; the food is amazing, and as an Indian, I can put my stamp of approval on how authentic it tastes. But the menu doesn't advance that aroma of Indian culture to the fullest, leaving a lot of room for improvement in syncing the ambition with the restaurant operations.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

You may have noticed that we haven't specified how exactly to craft a good menu. We recognize our limitations; we're not restauranteurs or graphic designers ourselves, so we'll pass on providing disingenuous advice. However, hopefully this article was a helpful framework of considerations as you're reassessing your restaurant menus. From a strategic perspective, harmonization across restaurant operations is key to success. We're not here to tell you how exactly to organize your menu. But we do hope to emphasize the importance of synergy between your ambition, target customer, and overall menu.