Trend Items Are Diluting Your Menu
Reactive marketing feels like momentum. It usually isn’t.
Every few months there’s a new must-have: a viral dessert, a sauce, a drink that’s suddenly everywhere. Adding it feels like keeping up. Customers ask for it. The post performs.
And slowly, your menu stops saying anything about you.
Borrowed attention, borrowed identity
A trend item brings people in for the trend, not for you. When it fades — and it always fades — those customers move on to the next place that has it. What’s left is a menu with one more thing on it that doesn’t fit.
Do this a few times and the menu becomes a timeline of what was popular, rather than a statement of what you do best.
Chasing trends feels like momentum. It usually leaves you further from your signature.
When it’s fine to follow a trend
When it fits your signature. A smokehouse adding a smoked version of a trending dish is interpreting, not chasing. The trend becomes a new way to say the same true thing.
When it’s clearly limited. A short run, framed as a playful one-off, protects the core menu.
When you’d be proud of it without the trend. If it only works because it’s viral, it doesn’t belong on the permanent menu.
Build a menu that compounds instead
At Cherry & Oak, the menu was the one touchpoint that was unmistakably a smokehouse — while the logo, the room and the feed told other stories. The fix was to align everything else to that signal, not to add more items. Average monthly revenue rose 60%, sustained over 15 months.
- Mark each menu item: signature, supporting or trend.
- Retire trend items that don’t interpret your signature.
- Put your marketing behind the signatures, every month.