Menus across the industry have contracted, with fewer dishes and more overlap between them. The change is driven by inventory arithmetic rather than by fashion.
Every dish carries an inventory tail
A dish that sells twice a week still requires its ingredients to be held, ordered, rotated and checked, and any that spoil are a direct loss.
Perishable items are the problem. A niche fish or an unusual herb used in one dish must be bought in a minimum quantity and used before it turns.
Removing that dish removes the entire tail: the storage, the ordering, the training and the waste, which is why deletions save more than the dish's own margin.
Shared ingredients change the maths
A menu designed so components appear across several dishes turns slow items into contributors rather than liabilities, because the ingredients turn over regardless.
Kitchens increasingly design backwards from the ingredient list, asking what can be built from a compact set rather than assembling dishes and buying to suit.
That is why menus look more repetitive on close inspection, with the same base preparations reappearing under different treatments.
Service speed depends on station load
Each dish is assembled at a station, and a wide menu spreads orders unpredictably across stations, creating queues at whichever one a table happens to load.
A tighter menu concentrates work into predictable patterns, so the kitchen can be staffed and laid out for what will actually arrive.
Consistency improves as well, since cooks repeat a smaller number of preparations frequently rather than making some occasionally.
Staffing pressure made complexity expensive
Recruiting experienced kitchen staff has become considerably harder across much of the industry, and complex menus require exactly that experience.
A shorter menu can be executed reliably by a smaller and less senior brigade, with more preparation done in advance and less improvisation on service.
It also shortens training, which matters where turnover is high and a new starter must be productive within days.
Delivery pushed further in the same direction
Dishes that travel badly damage ratings, and ratings determine placement within delivery applications, so kitchens prune anything fragile.
Orders arriving from several platforms simultaneously also demand a menu the kitchen can execute without stopping to think about sequencing.
The commercial result is a shorter list that reads as confidence and functions as risk management, and diners generally report being satisfied with the trade.