When you are losing staff... especially kitchen... you really can't expand the menu without creating more stress. Labor has so many options that high stress environments tend to fail.
So the secret is to keep a narrow, but memorable menu. That includes the drinks that you will be serving.
To survive long term, you must under promise (including advertising) and over perform.
I noticed some of this problem daily as HD and Lowes customers expect us to have doors and windows in a large variety on the shelf. I custom order almost everything. So the customer wanting something now is a bit disappointed. That is a failure of our branding/marketing.
I have calls from people wondering what is in stock. Other than my internal system, the internet tie-in is under store.lavalleys.com with a drop down to the upper right for each locations on-hand stock and pricing (we price across all locations the same), but we fail to advertise in a way that helps the customer get and use this information to their advantage.
Our niche is we deliver free anything over $100, and some customers have never seen that advertised.
Being well run should be any business, but branding/advertising is what leads the customer to certain businesses depending on their need at that moment.
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