The Menu Nobody Has Read In Two Years

Items get added. Almost nothing gets removed.

After a few years the list is long, three of the items account for most of what sells, and nobody can say what the rest are for.

That is not a menu. It is a sediment.

The four kinds of item

Every line falls into one of four boxes, and the boxes need different decisions.

Sells a lot, good margin. Protect these. Know exactly what they cost you and check that quarterly, because a supplier increase here does more damage than anywhere else.

Sells a lot, poor margin. The dangerous one. Volume disguises it — the item looks successful because it moves. Either the price is wrong or the cost has drifted since it was set.

Sells little, good margin. Not a problem, and frequently doing a job that has nothing to do with its own sales — see anchoring, below.

Sells little, poor margin. These are the ones to remove, and they are usually the ones people defend most fiercely.

The counting

An afternoon, once. For each item: units sold last quarter, and margin per unit.

Plot them into the four boxes. In most venues the fourth box is larger than anyone expected, and half of it is items somebody added for a specific occasion that ended.

⚠️ Do this on units, not revenue. A high-price item selling rarely looks impressive by revenue and tells you nothing about whether it is working.

Why removing is harder than it looks

Two reasons to be careful, and one reason to do it anyway.

Some items anchor. The most expensive bottle may sell twice a year and still be doing its job — it makes everything below it look reasonable. Removing it does not move those sales to the next item down; it moves the whole perception of your pricing. Judge anchors by what sits below them, not by their own sales.

Some items belong to somebody. A regular's drink, a cast member's usual. Removing it is a small insult with a disproportionate effect.

But a long list has a real cost: slower ordering, more mistakes, more stock held, more things to count, and a guest who takes longer to decide. The cost is spread across every night and therefore invisible, which is why it never gets addressed.

The safer move than removing

Stop listing it. Keep making it.

An item off the printed list but still available covers the regular who orders it, removes the choice burden, and reduces nothing you actually hold. Most of what should leave a menu can leave this way with no conversation at all.

What to add instead

Almost every venue's list is missing the same thing: something between the cheapest and the most expensive that is easy to say yes to.

The gap is usually in the middle. Guests who will not order the cheapest and are not ready for the top have nothing designed for them, and they default down.

⚠️ The middle is where the volume is, and it is the part that gets designed last.

The seasonal trap

A limited item that stayed. It was for an occasion, the occasion ended, and it is still on the list two years later because removing things requires a decision and adding them does not.

The check: does every item on the list have a reason someone can state in one sentence? The ones that fail are your fourth box, and they got there by inertia rather than by choice.

Three to hold

Units sold per item, last quarter. The half of the picture most venues have.

Margin per unit. The half most do not, and the one that changes the answer.

Number of items nobody can explain. Count it once. It is uncomfortable and it is the fastest route to a shorter list.

Where the record has to sit

Units are in the till and margins are on invoices, which is why the two are never on the same page and the menu never gets reviewed.

tasteck keeps sales against the cost basis you set, so the four boxes are a sort rather than an afternoon with two spreadsheets.

Nobody decided on this menu. It arrived one addition at a time, and none of them was ever reconsidered.