How many items should go on a menu?

All work work work at the minute, developing a menu is taking all the time I have and as I am wanting to share my progress with the steem community I am trying to update as much as possible.

A few months ago me and my partner in crime decided that we would be doing english food from out venue, this has had to be changed to doing the normal stuff such as burgers grills and pizza.

thanks pixabay for the image.

When searching through other takeaways they have a massive amount of food to sell to their customers and while I was working in the fast food industry I saw how much the staff struggled to keep up with what they were selling.

The amount of food would also make an impact on quality and that to me is my number one priority.

Without quality as standard I think that ours would be the same as all the other takeaways, you know what I mean, slow boring and shit quality.

I have been thinking that sometimes less is more when it comes to food, anyone can get a frozen burger from a freeze cook and slap it on a bun, this to me is lazy.

We want to scratch make our burger, kababs, pizzas, desserts and that is where quality comes into play.

The problem with scratch making everything is the time it takes to make items, we will be making everything by hand including our double cooked chips, onion rings and sauces.

Things can be made before sale, burgers can be premade and stored in a fridge but then how many burgers does one make for a shift? well know one knows as the food industry is so unpredictable.

So how many items should we use? what would be the best?

I have looked at the chain takeaways such as mcdonalds burger king and Kfc and there menus are pretty small compared to a independent takeaway.

I think that is one reason that big chains can pump out more is because they can watch the quality of their products and produce.

With that been said, what happens when someone looks at a takeaway menu? they like choice, I plan to give choice but less and produce better products.

The butcher I plan to get my meat from is local, I used to work for him for a short time and I happen to know he chooses his own animals to sell, this means that it is locally sauced which I plan to put on the menu.

I was looking at all the takeaway that are open near me, and they have at least 20 pizzas on their menus. Wow I thought, how does one keep up with all them pizzas, then when I looked closer some of the pizzas were very similar.

So what is the point of repeating the same pizza and just changing an item or two?

I have now narrowed it down to 12 pizzas and I think we are going to stick to this, these are my working outs to come to this conclusion.

1. The less items on a menu, means less confusion for a customer
2. You can buy the fewer items you have on a menu in bulk as you require less storage space.
3. No frozen items, which means fresh fresh fresh.
4. Staff only have 12 items on the menu to learn, which reduces mistakes.

I am going to break down the workings out as there is more that I have thought about too.

1. When I order from a takeaway I tend to spend ages looking through a menu as there is just too much to choose from, and then I tend to get the pizza that I always order anyway.
   With there been less on the menu we can also describe in words what each pizza has on it instead of just what the topping are.

For example.

Other takeaways.
BBQ pizza.
chicken, bbq sauce, sweetcorn onion and peppers

Our takeaway.
Smoky BBq Chicken pizza.
Freshly made pizza dough with our own smoky BBQ sauce with a generous topping of local bbq marinated chicken fresh red onion, ripe red peppers and char grilled corn.

Which one sounds to you like the one you would like to eat? I know which one I would like and having less items means that descriptions can play part in marketing each item on the menu.

1. Due to storage, many takeaways use freezers to store their items, this means that your food is just cooked and sent to your door, it also means that there has been less care in what they have used.

I have seen it where a takeaway sends a burger out and the lettuce had been cut a few days before, the lettuce is brown soggy and to me is inedible.

With having less items on the menu it also means that we can buy in bulk, which saves money, the quality will be better as the items you sell will be sold more than something that is sat around for a few days.

1. I am a big believer in fresh food, I have worked with fresh and frozen foods and the difference is massive.

I have had burgers come to my house that have been pink raw in the middle because the takeaway has cooked the outside and thinking that it is cooked they have sent it to me.

I think cooking handmade burgers from fresh is the better idea, yes they are fatter in size but once them juices are clear you know the middle is done.

1. How many times have you ordered from a takeaway and got the wrong food order? I have on a number of occasions got the wrong food and it really pisses me off.

While working for different takeaways I have seen staff having to read what items go on different pizzas, WTF.

I have seen the owner even having to read off his own menu and make the food as he didn't even know what went on his pizza.

12 items on the pizza list and there should be no mistakes whatsoever, you could even teach a monkey to make that many food items and he would get it right.

I have worked out that if I keep the menu small then I can keep to quality freshness and reduce mistakes.

What do you think of a smaller menu? do you think that I am making the right decision when it comes to making this menu, any insight/feedback would be great.

I know that I can't please everyone and I think that doing a menu this way would benefit everyone and would make the takeaway a success.