Avoid bloated menu syndrome by defining expectations

Choosing what to eat is as subjective and personal as picking a spouse, and most of us do it much more often. So how do we make a living selling food? By remembering we can’t please everyone.

All politics may indeed be local, but all gastronomy is personal. Anyone with children knows this: two of any given three may be devouring their scrambled eggs like wolves while the other quietly feeds hers to the wolf beneath the table. One can’t eat lamb, one can’t eat fish, and the arguments over mayonnaise and Miracle Whip rival the early days of the Protestant Reformation.

We all have the same physical equipment, pretty much, to evaluate what we put in our gullets, and one might expect that similar preferences would result. So how come some idiots like goat cheese?

Me among them, if you’re interested, but I digress. There’s no disagreement that there’s no clear agreement over food. Choosing what to eat is as subjective and personal as picking a spouse, and most of us do it much more often. So, with that understood, how do those of us who sell food for a living avoid starvation?

There are a couple of quick and glib answers. One would be: by eating the inventory. Never known a cook to die of hunger. The more usual problems of delirium tremens and home foreclosure are just annoyances by comparison.

A more prudent and less operatic approach is to employ statistics. Please don’t be frightened here; I’m not going to suggest that we all go back to school or learn about Laffer Curves (I think it’s a comedy club-weight loss franchise, but I could be wrong). I’m simply offering the opinion that there’s a numeric underpinning to some of the tired clichés that are the philosophical foundation of our business.

For instance: You Can’t Please Everyone.

Those who have made it past preschool should have figured this out. I have worked in a number of places where that lesson was, somehow, forgotten—and the menus kept growing and growing in response to every request from a customer, no matter how inane. Thus we find stir-fries at biker bars, blackened redfish at trattorias, and, in the ’90s, a ghastly iteration of fettuccine Alfredo at every “family dining” chain in the country. In this later phase of my life I get an occasional panicked call from someone whose menu has grown out of control, fertilized by idealistic visions which turned out to be fertilizer. The pruning process is simple with a half-decent, point-of-sale system: you look at what ain’t selling and fix it or dump it.

And: The Customer is Always Right.

Pick any server and ask her if she agrees with that phrase. Do it from a distance, and wear earplugs. Next, ask a couple of mathematicians. They will tell you that it is a statistical certainty that, after having been open for a certain period of time, you will have served at least one complete numbskull. Some of the more enterprising ones might sell you an algorithm which helps to predict the times these types are most likely to come in. Save your money: Saturday at 7 p.m.

So we have a couple of our basic tenets, one statistically easy to affirm, the other just as easily contradicted, and they seem to stand in opposition to each other. And we act as if the one that’s obviously false is the more important of the two. I love this business.

The reason we do this is simple: we live in reality but sell the myth. No one can make every customer happy, but any time a customer walks through the door, the possibility exists that we will give him the time of his life. Sometimes the odds of this are vanishingly small, but the possibility is still there—and anyone who ceases to recognize it should find another line of work. We have to try; it’s what we’re for.

So with the boundaries of the real and the ideal firmly laid, how do we blur them so the customers feel they’ve crossed over? You’ve been told a million times: exceed their expectations. For me, this leaves out a step. It’s your restaurant, not theirs. Define their expectations first. Then exceed them.

If your customers have a clear idea what they’re walking into, you’ve solved more than half of your problems. Don’t feel bad that an occasional veto vote will cost you a four-top when some tofu-eater nixes your wings-and-burger joint. He wouldn’t have bought three beers anyway, and he’d have ruined the atmosphere for the guys that would. If you feel you must feed him or you’ve failed, open another restaurant. Every quirk of gastronomical demography represents another opportunity, but don’t think you have to take care of them all. There’s plenty to go around.