Introduction
As soon as you sit down at your table at any restaurant, you are greeted with a menu. Even though it may not seem like an important aspect of your restaurant experience, a menu carries a lot of weight in how your meal will go. Depending on the type of person you are, you may open a giant menu packed with options from coastal Caribbean food to classic American breakfast and be ecstatic. Personally, however, I am on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. A long menu implies nothing but trouble. Some questions immediately begin to circle in my mind: What type of food is this restaurant’s focus? How can a restaurant have enough fresh ingredients for every single dish? How can a kitchen push out so many plates of food on a busy night if every menu item is made to order? Honestly, it all doesn’t add up. In this post, I will share my thoughts on why a long menu at a restaurant may not be the best sign.
Long Menus Create a Stressful Experience for the Customer
There is no specific number of menu items that is truly optimal. The number of items a restaurant carries is heavily dependent on what the kitchen can handle. However, there is a theory called the “paradox of choice”, which states that the more options we have, the more stress and anxiety we feel. According to Technomic’s MenuMonitor, the average chain restaurant menu in mid-2018 had a little over 132 items. If you have been to a chain restaurant before, such as Chili’s or the Cheesecake Factory, you probably have some favorite dishes in mind, so ordering from their lengthy menu shouldn’t be a problem. However, for a person going to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time, there is definitely some anxiety involved. Picking from the 250 plus dishes ranging from flatbread pizzas to steaks to cheesecakes is not an easy task. Your mind races with thoughts of what you should get. Should you stay healthy or say, “screw it” and splurge a little? Should you get Italian, Asian, or American food? You end up going down an endless rabbit hole of menu possibilities and end up frantically choosing one of the 15 menu items that caught your eye after reading through the novel of a menu. Being overwhelmed by the menu takes away from your dining experience as a whole. You spend time focusing on what you want to eat, instead of being present and catching up with your friends and family.
On the other hand, there is a scenario in which a restaurant has too small of a menu and customers feel limited to the few choices provided. But even in that situation, your decision is much simpler and quicker, leaving you more time to relax and really enjoy yourself.
There really is no sweet spot on the best menu size, and as I said earlier, it really depends on the restaurant. Cheesecake Factory has so many menu items because they can continue to bring in a large customer base with it, but being bombarded with such a large menu can be distracting and stressful at the same time.
It is Difficult to Maintain Quality with a Long Menu
When you sit down at a dining establishment that has an abundant menu with over 100 items, you still expect to receive your food in a timely manner. According to a survey done by Long Range Systems, LLC, the average wait for a party to receive their food is 23 minutes. This is a relatively short period of time and puts a lot of pressure on the kitchen to deliver and work efficiently. The fact of the matter is, regardless of how quick a kitchen staff works, preparing multiple entrees, sides, and appetizers to order in such a short period of time during a busy dinner service is insane. To handle such a serious kitchen workload, many kitchens resort to premade and frozen food. Large scale chain restaurants, such as Olive Garden, Chilis, and Red Lobster, resort to using frozen food in order to keep up with demand from their customers. Considering each dish takes multiple ingredients to make and the menu has over 100 dishes, it is simply unrealistic for a restaurant to have all the fresh ingredients necessary for each dish at the chef’s disposal on a daily basis. This makes using some premade food their only option.
To further my argument, I decided to calculate the average number of menu items at the top 10 restaurants in Denver, according to Christine Loomis of USA Today 10 best. The average number was 18 menu items, a very large difference from the average 132 items discussed above. By having such a limited menu, restaurants are able to bring in high-quality fresh ingredients for every dish. Chefs are also able to put their full attention into the few dishes that are on the menu. With this opportunity, chefs are able to execute each dish to perfection and make sure that everything is just right, a commodity that restaurants with large menus simply don’t have. The correlation between a smaller menu and higher quality food is no fluke. There is no need for frozen, pre-made, and pre-packaged food. Cooks can feel comfortable in knowing that the few dishes on their menu will be made perfectly with great ingredients.
Some restaurants make the long menu and wide variety of items concept work, regardless of how they do it. For example, a Chinese take-out restaurant can afford to have a long menu, because many of the dishes require the same components, except for the protein (ie: teriyaki chicken, teriyaki beef). However, just know that if you walk into a restaurant with 100 plus menu items, some of the dishes may not be fresh or may not even be made in the restaurant, but shipped from an entirely different part of the country.
Conclusion
When culminating a menu, you want to try to find the perfect balance between a nice variety and high quality. Usually, with each additional item added to the menu, the kitchen’s job gets just a little harder and the customer’s decision becomes a little more complex, making long menus a troublesome component rather than a helping hand.
If you enjoyed this post, check out my last post on how to find great restaurants in new cities.
