The next big thing on menus: Smaller portions
By Jordan Valinsky, CNN
New York (CNN) — Olive Garden, which has traditionally seen success from its annual unlimited pasta promotion, recently noticed the opposite trend: Some customers actually wanted less food.
Last quarter, the restaurant chain tested a new menu section at a little less than half of its locations: smaller portions, along with reduced prices, for seven of its dinner entrées. The trial was designed to appeal to cash-conscious customers, who’ve been cutting eating out from their budgets, hurting restaurants’ profits.
It was a success. Customers’ feedback was positive. The chain’s internal affordability metric jumped 15%. And early signs showed the new menu was not only bringing diners back but perhaps even turning them into regulars, Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, revealed during last month’s earnings call.
From the chain that invented unlimited breadsticks — which, by the way, was included in this trial — what changed for customers?
“Maybe our consumers finally evolved that you don’t need to have uneaten food on the plate to feel that you’ve gotten good value,” Darden CEO Rick Cardenas said on an analyst call last month, while also noting affordability as a factor.
“You can just eat just the right amount of portion and be happy with it. That would certainly be a change versus the old America, but that obviously would be a good direction to go.”
Budgets are tight, but customers are also eating differently.
The National Restaurant Association found in their annual survey that 64% of consumers tend to replace three traditional meals with snack items during the day, and 74% of restaurant customers say they crave smaller portions. Plus, reducing portion sizes cuts down on the excess waste that’s become a major problem in the industry.
Broadening the menu with less expensive options is also a way for chain restaurants to fight back against fast food chains, which are currently embroiled in a war amongst themselves, according to Maeve Webster, president of consulting firm Menu Matters.
“From the casual dining perspective, it is as much about competing more effectively with the quick service restaurants (that) have embraced value-meal discounts and promotions as it is about offering consumers a more affordable option,” she said.
Bites and deals
Olive Garden isn’t alone in giving its menu a diet.
The Cheesecake Factory, which has had smaller, low-calorie versions of its decadent entrées on its menu since 2011, expanded its value options this summer in hopes of reversing negative traffic trends. It introduced a new “Bites” section with petite portions priced under $10.
Two weeks ago, P.F. Chang’s launched an overhaul of its menu to include two portion sizes for all of its entrées — “traditional” and “medium,” which is smaller and lower priced. The chain is offering a select number of appetizers in smaller sizes, too.
“One of the things today’s consumer is looking for are ways to enjoy dining out without feeling like they’re breaking the bank,” said Sonika Patel, P.F. Chang’s chief marketing officer, adding that the changes were the result of customers wanting more “flexible options.”
P.F. Chang’s, which is mostly known for its family-style portions, also rolled out lunch and dinner specials earlier this year that include individual portions of its entrées along with an appetizer and a base (i.e. rice or noodle) for a fixed price.
“Our job is to make it easier for (customers) to discover and be able to customize, the different options that we give on our menu,” Patel told CNN.
P.F. Chang’s, which is privately owned, doesn’t reveal earnings. However, third-party data from Ignite Company showed a 3% dip in sales in 2024, with an additional 1.5% decline forecasted for this year — concerning numbers that could have inspired the major changes.
Some online chatter has also attributed the smaller options to the rise of Wegovy, Ozempic and other weight loss drugs. But Patel demurred when CNN asked if the chain is seeing any consumer habits changing because of GLP-1 drugs.
“We’re always looking at trends to see kind of what consumer behavior is. We’re giving consumers the options so that everyone can enjoy P.F. Chang’s in their own way, on their own terms,” she said.
Menu Matters’ Webster believes the effect of weight loss drugs isn’t factoring much into national chain’s menu decisions because the “reality is that a relatively small share of adults are currently on GLP-1s or are considering being on them.”
“GLP-1s have the potential to significantly alter the food industry but we need a lot more consumers on them to effect the kind of impact the industry is attributing to them at this point,” she told CNN.
Changing habits
Beyond affordability and perhaps the overdone panic of weight-loss drugs, Webster said that reducing portion sizes is a way for restaurants to adjust to the changing way consumers eat and live.
Since Covid-19, there’s been a shift among younger eaters “toward a snack-forward eating pattern” throughout the day, forgoing the traditional seated meal, she said.
There’s also the increasing number of solo eaters, a trend Webster said the restaurant industry is “not yet fully prepared to address, but will need to address quickly.”
More people are eating alone because of the growing number of consumers staying single later in life, the increasing divorce rates and even the loneliness epidemic sweeping all ages, especially seniors.
Altering menus presents challenges for restaurants. But Webster predicts that people’s eating patterns are now significantly different enough from when the menus were first designed that these portion trends could spread.
The industry has been “talking about customization and have facilitated endless customization in many food and beverage categories for years, but have not really allowed for the same flexibility and customization when it comes to portion size,” she said. “That should be a long-term goal for most operators.”
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