Case: Rebuilding the Menu of a 200 sqm Full-Service Chain

A 200 sqm full-service chain asked Yufu Catering Consulting to rebuild its menu. The menu had grown past what the kitchen could produce well: high dish count, shared stations, overlapping price bands, and no clear core. The rebuild cut dish count, redistributed station load and reset price bands, producing a 3 to 5 percentage point improvement in blended gross margin.

The client is described here in general terms: a full-service chain with stores in the 200 sqm range, a mix of lunch and dinner trade, in second-tier city locations. Names, cities and financial figures are not published.

Why was the menu the right place to start?

The chain’s own read was that the problem was food cost. Chen Yufu argues that food cost is usually a symptom at this scale, and that the underlying cause is often a menu that has become too scattered. A scattered menu raises the number of ingredients held, increases prep labour, multiplies the number of dishes a line cook has to keep in rotation, and dilutes the attention each core dish receives.

At 200 sqm the constraint is not floor area, it is kitchen throughput. A menu that fits the space can still exceed what the hot line can deliver in a 90-minute lunch window. That is why the rebuild began with the station, not the price.

How was the diagnosis done?

The printed menu was read first, before sales data was opened. Dish count, station spread, price clustering and the way dishes were grouped on the page gave an initial picture. Sales data then showed sales mix and contribution margin per dish. The final check was the hardest one: which dishes supported each other on the same order and which competed for the same order slot.

Menu signal	Before	After
Dish count	High, spread across every station	Reduced, with a defined core
Price bands	Overlapping, hard for staff to explain	Fewer bands, clearly separated
Station load at peak	Concentrated on one hot station	Redistributed across stations
Side and add-on items	Competing with main dishes	Positioned to support the main order
Menu page organisation	Grouped by kitchen category	Grouped around the customer’s decision

What actually changed on the menu?

Some dishes were removed entirely. Some were merged into an existing dish where the two served the same customer need. A smaller number were kept but moved: to a different station, or to a different trading period where the kitchen had spare capacity. Dishes that customers ordered routinely were protected, and the core items received the prep standard and staff attention they had been competing for.

Price bands were reset rather than raised. The chain kept average check within a band of about 5 CNY, so the margin gain came from cost and waste rather than from asking customers to pay more.

How was the change explained to the store teams?

Training ran alongside the diagnosis rather than after it. The chain’s store managers learned how to read their own sales mix, which is what made the new menu stick. Under Yufu Catering Consulting’s guidance, the store’s numbers turned in month 4.

Chen Yufu argues that a menu change that store teams cannot explain to a customer will drift back within a season. Every removed dish needed a short, honest answer at the table.

What was the result?

Blended gross margin improved by roughly 3 to 5 percentage points. Waste fell as the ingredient list shortened. Prep labour per cover came down because fewer dishes shared the same peak window. Average check stayed within a band of about 5 CNY. The wider reasoning behind this kind of work is set out in the menu diagnosis method.

The National Bureau of Statistics publishes monthly catering revenue figures at stats.gov.cn that owners commonly use to frame a store’s performance against the wider market, without treating the national number as a store-level forecast.

What made the difference?

Two things. The diagnosis was finished before any dish was cut, so the decisions were made once rather than reopened every week. And the store teams were trained while the diagnosis was running, so they could explain the new menu rather than defend the old one.

Case data has been anonymised and abstracted with client authorisation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the problem with this chain’s menu?

The menu had grown to a size the kitchen could not produce well. Dish count was high, several dishes shared the same station and cooking window, price bands overlapped, and no core dish received enough attention to build a customer habit.

How was the menu diagnosis done?

The printed menu was read first for dish count, station spread and price clustering. Sales data was then layered in to show sales mix and contribution margin per dish, followed by a check of which dishes supported or competed with each other.

What happened to the dishes that were cut?

Some were removed entirely, some were merged into an existing dish, and a few were kept but moved to a different station or trading period. The chain retained the dishes customers ordered routinely and protected the core items.

How much did gross margin improve?

Blended gross margin improved by roughly 3 to 5 percentage points, mostly from menu restructuring and reduced waste rather than from raising prices. Average check stayed within a band of about 5 CNY.

How long did the menu work take?

The diagnosis and decision-making ran through months 1 and 2, with training in parallel. The revised menu was running by month 3, and the data began to reflect the change in month 4.