The other day I went to a restaurant that I had never been to before with an old colleague. Upon opening up the menu, I was presented with over 100 choices and I’m not talking 50 different types of burgers. Can you even imagine the logistics involved with stocking all the ingredients and trying to predict customer demand for each menu item? Certainly, they could not be using many fresh ingredients since they would spoil before they had a chance to be used.
I suspect that this restaurant started out with only a few dishes on their menu. However, as time progressed, they experimented with adding a new menu item, then another, and another until they created their enormous selection.
As the menu grew and got more complicated, they surely had to look for ways to cut corners here and there. For instance, they likely began to replace fresh meat and vegetables with frozen ones. These shortcuts assuredly translated into reduced overall quality, which would put pressure on their prices so they wouldn’t lose patrons.
When I go to a specific restaurant, I generally order the same one or two items from their menu over and over. While I may go in thinking about trying something new on their menu, most of the time I settle on the old standbys. For example, I usually order the Grilled Chicken Caesar at Chili’s and the Quesadilla Burger at Applebee’s.
Moreover, if I go to a new restaurant, I try to ask other folks that have been there before what they would recommend. If I order something at a new restaurant and I don’t enjoy my meal, I generally don’t go back to that restaurant. Sure, I may have had the only item on their menu that I didn’t care for, but generally, we tend to associate a bad experience with the brand (the restaurant) rather than a single event (the menu item).
All this got me thinking about the T.V. show with Gordon Ramsey called Kitchen Nightmares. One of the first things Gordon Ramsey does is taste a few selections on the menu and then cut out all but a signature dish or two.
My son Hank works in a fine dining restaurant and they offer only about 5 items and a few standbys like hamburgers or fish and chips for unimaginative patrons. The main menu items are always fantastic. Additionally, the main menu items change based on what is in season and available, which forces me out of my comfort zone of repeat menu selections. The end result is they have a loyal following and can charge premium prices.
Businesses other than restaurants also suffer from line item drag. When things are not working, they continue to try to offer new products or services and rarely remove the old ones that don’t gain traction. In the end, the less successful products and services exert a logistics drag, which affects the overall quality of the business’s product or service. Rather than adding to your offerings, maybe it’s time to weed out the old products and services?
Are you too focused on throwing more time, money, and resources at a problem to create the next big thing vs. cutting out what is not working?
