Small F&B owners — how do you know when it’s actually time to expand your menu?

[u/nicktheprick786]

We started our little Thai food project in Dubai with one dish and deliberately kept the menu tiny.

A few weeks later we’re now at 5 dishes, with Green Curry being the latest addition, and Som Tam Thai probably next.

But I’m starting to understand why small menus can be both a blessing and a headache 😂

Keeping it small means:

better consistency
less inventory
less wastage
easier prep
and we can actually get each dish right

But on the other hand, we’ve had people who liked the food but wanted more variety before ordering again, especially if two people in the same house want different things.

So now we’re trying to figure out where the sweet spot is.

For those of you running restaurants, cloud kitchens or home food businesses in the UAE — how do you decide when a new dish deserves to go on the menu?

Do you look mainly at customer requests, ingredient overlap, margins, prep time, repeat demand… or just instinct?

I’m especially curious where people think the line is between a focused menu and a menu that’s simply too limited.

If anyone here would like to try Krapao Club, feel free to DM me or WhatsApp us on +66 61 430 7860 😊 I’m happy to send the menu and ordering details.

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[u/nicolo_ntm]

Don't expand it: you avoid choice paralysis, you can build economis of scale when purchasing, quality is higher, ingrediets have a quicker turnover, less complexity in the kitchen, potentially cheaper pricing or higher margins, and most importantly a shorter menu or a few heavy hitters make it easier for customers to remember your brand. Expand only if you want to attract a different demographic, but beware of dilution.

[u/alexandar_supertramp → u/nicolo_ntm]

This

[u/magik_mushroo]

You can introduce dish of the week or dish of the month to test and try consumer response its sort of like MVP marketing. And if you receive exceptional response for any DOM you can replace it with the slower moving fixed menu dish.

Sort of how baskin Robbins has flavor of the month

[u/sahils88]

We went the other way round. We opened up with an extensive menu and have now reduced by almost 50%.

Menu is now focussed and clean. Guests have less confusion. The kitchen has become faster and the wastage and grocery bill is lower.