Hello, industry leaders. Let’s talk about something more important than trends, flavors, or technology: People.

In every consulting engagement, when performance dips, someone eventually says: “We have a talent problem.” Most of the time, they don’t. They have a clarity and stability problem.

Employees want to win. The vast majority of your team members want to be successful. But here’s what makes that difficult: menus that are too large, products that change too frequently, constant LTO churn, shifting specs and procedures. If your team never gets the chance to master the menu, they never build confidence. And confidence is what creates consistency.

When BOH is scrambling to keep up with changes, ticket times stretch, mistakes increase, stress rises, and morale drops. That chaos doesn’t stay in the kitchen. It travels to the dining room.

When back-of-house delivery becomes unstable, food arrives inconsistently, servers lose confidence selling, guests feel uncertainty, and online reviews reflect frustration. Customers may not know why the experience feels off. But they feel it.

Look at what happened when several major QSR chains (including McDonald’s in select markets and Jack in the Box system-wide) carried bloated menus into 2024–2025. BOH teams were constantly retrained, cross-utilization vanished, and ticket times ballooned. Guests noticed — and reviews tanked. The moment those same chains began simplifying and extending core-item life cycles, execution stabilized, morale improved, and same-store sales followed. Customers also need stability. Just like employees need time to learn the menu, customers need time to form habits. When you change too much, favorites disappear, flavor profiles shift, portion sizes fluctuate, and pricing feels unpredictable. Habit drives frequency. Frequency drives revenue.

A focused, well-executed 60-item menu will outperform a chaotic 110-item menu almost every time. Ask yourself: Does my team have time to truly master this? Can we execute this at peak volume flawlessly? Are we giving customers consistency they can rely on? Growth does not come from complexity. It comes from clarity

If you want your people to succeed: rationalize your menu annually, reduce unnecessary SKUs, extend life cycles of core products, limit changes to defined windows, and train deeply instead of constantly retraining. People want to win. Give them a system they can win in.

If you’re seeing operational stress, declining consistency, or customer fatigue, it may not be a people problem. It may be a development discipline problem.

The Innovation Foundry works with brands to align menu strategy, operations, and execution so both employees and customers thrive.

Reach out at Mike@TheInnovationFoundry.co or connect with me on LinkedIn. Let’s build systems your people can succeed in.

Best,

Mike Leitner Founder, The Innovation Foundry