What's the Right Number of Menu Items for Your Restaurant?

As diners, we've all seen the extremes: a Greek diner with a phone-book-thick menu that jumps from diner-style hash browns to a souvlaki to veal marsala and back again. Or tasting menus at the hottest chef's table in town where you walk in, sit down and let the chef take the wheel.

The right number for your restaurant will likely be found somewhere in between those extremes. Finding your "just right"-sized menu will come from the customer experience you envision and your ability to make it happen.

Finding a balance is the goal. When determining your own magic number of menu items, you must take into consideration several factors, including what your customers want, the skill level of your kitchen staff and what your facility and purveyors can handle.

In fact there are many factors, including food costs, labor costs and storage costs, that can affect real estate expense. The more items listed on the menu the more room you need to store those items. Just the simple task of printing and displaying your menu can become a much more complicated task. And don't forget that front-of-the-house servers have to be more 'menu knowledgeable,' which can lead toward increased turnover.

The Paradox of Choice

Offer too many menu options with too many choices and human nature takes over, with customers finding it difficult to make a choice at all. Technology, Entertainment, Design recently featured speaker Barry Schwartz in a talk titled, "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less."

More than 6 million people tuned into this program in which Schwartz points out that "paradoxically...it produces paralysis, rather than liberation," he says. "With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all."

View it for free at www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.

Has this phenomenon affected menus?

Recent data shows that it has. For the first time since such numbers were measured, the menus of the nation's biggest chain restaurants are shrinking. The average number of menu items is down for the first time since market research firm Technomic began tracking the data 10 years ago.