How to Design the Perfect Menu System: A Mise Mode Guide to Fresh Food Menu Strategies That Actually Work

Welcome to the Complex World of Fresh Food R&D

Let’s cut to the chase, because anyone who is running or launching a fresh food brand does not have time to waste. Right?

There is only one way a food business can stay in business, and that’s through selling—profitably selling—food and drink. If the items you put on your menu don’t drive sales or the cost of producing and selling them is more than they earn, guess what’s going to happen? That’s right—big trouble in food paradise.

Using your menus as a strategic system designed for success instead of a curated list of dishes is the difference between stellar financial performance and meh. That means the most powerful tool you have to drive successful performance and ensure longevity is your menu.

The menu your customers (or future customers) are reading in your restaurant or online has more of an effect on people than you might know. Each item you choose to feature has the ability to make one person’s meal delightful or disappointing, nourishing or draining, forgettable or—for good reasons or bad—mind-blowingly memorable. With each dish you design, you have the opportunity to create a conversation, a trend, even a game-changing movement. No matter the size of your business, you can create awareness around everything from ingredient provenance to responsible waste disposal with subtle messaging and intentional word choices. And, of course, the dishes you present on your menu are deciding the future of your business itself: every single item might just be the thing that makes or breaks you in real time.

I’ve been responsible for overseeing the food teams that create new menu items and manage menu launches for massive brands and corporations across my career (I mean massive—think major restaurant names you might see on the daily, serving 60,000 meals a day and more), and if you were introduced to my Mise Mode methodology by reading A Taste of Opportunity, you already know how I feel about food—especially fresh, nutritious food and the importance of putting dishes on menus that are designed to delight, to nourish, and to drive profit and revenue. Now, I want to help more food businesses—from the chains to the independent restaurant operators—understand and adopt the real systems and strategies that make it possible for the world’s major fresh food brands to navigate the many, many challenges this industry throws at you, and create delicious, good-for-you, and profitable menus that people actually want.

This, right here, is the ultimate purpose of Mise Mode, my career-development version of the mise en place that most professional chefs use in the kitchen to make sure everything they need is prepped, organized, and in one place before they start cooking. Except in this case, your mise bowls are the planning tools, strategies, and even mindsets I lay out in this book—plus some takeaway summaries that will help you boil down the lessons of each chapter into a few key ideas you can use right away to start designing and managing your menus like a pro. You are about to reap the benefits of all the best processes and strategies I’ve created and used over the long years I’ve spent in this industry working with a wide range of food organizations. There are a lot of factors to consider in this Mise Mode framework, but it begins with one thing: understanding how important good, adaptable menu planning is to the success of a fresh food brand.

There Is No Random in a

Successful Fresh Food Restaurant

Fresh food R&D is a whole different beast from the mass manufacturing world—one that’s easier in some ways and faaaaar harder in others. In the mass production universe, R&D teams require a year (at least) to develop a new product and get it on the shelf, and that’s in the simplest scenarios—two big reasons for this long time frame are the supply chain and logistics considerations that big manufacturers face, and because they need to do all their testing behind the scenes. But when you’re working in the more agile world of fast-casual, multi-unit fresh food restaurants, a product idea can be in a diner’s plate in as little as 12 weeks. It’s an extraordinary advantage—you can real-world test and get feedback immediately, and you don’t have to commit to any product for longer than a quarter, a month, or even a couple of weeks.

That said, fresh food is far harder to tame. You’re dealing with perishables, after all! So, if you want the best chance of success, you have to make sure that every new menu item is designed to meet all of your brand, financial, and operational criteria before you invest any resources into releasing it. And that demands a strategic framework.

In the chapters ahead, you are going to learn why brand fit is the golden thread you need to weave through