Less on the menu means more for your business.
At Garçon SuperSlice in Salem, Massachusetts, a small menu is the key to success. Walk in, and the menu board won’t take long to read. Nine pizzas, all 18-inch. A few sandwiches, a couple of salads, a smash burger, a spicy fried chicken sandwich. That’s it.
“That’s on purpose, to keep control over as many things as I can,” owner, Keenan, states.
Now, two years in, he has a line out the door, a 12-person team, and a menu of exactly nine pizzas.
The secret? He stopped trying to offer everything.
Watch the full episode 👇
Here’s what every pizzeria owner can take from it.
PRO TIP: Download your Menu Rebuilder worksheet to take notes as we go through these lessons.
6 lessons on menu design
1. Start with obsession
It’s less about your resume, and more about your passion. It’s the patience and attention that comes from genuinely caring about what you’re making. Keenan eats pizza every day. He makes pizza every day. That’s not a habit. That’s an obsession.
That’s your jumping-off point.
| Your turn: If you’re building a menu you’re not obsessed with, your customers will feel it. What’s the one thing on your menu you’d eat every single day? |
2. A small menu is a management decision, not a creative one.
Nine pizzas sounds like a creative choice. It isn’t.
On any given night, busy or not, Garçon SuperSlice can run two people: one making and topping, one on the oven. That’s it. They switch when needed. They cover for each other. They move fast…because the menu doesn’t have 30 items.
“Everybody knows how to do everything here — in case somebody has to go to the bathroom, or they’re not here, or whatever. It just makes a stronger team.” – Keenan, Garçon
The small menu makes a two-person line possible. And the two-person line is what makes the margins possible.
| Your turn: Map out your current menu against your current staff. Could two people execute it confidently at full speed? If not, the menu is the problem. |
3. Train your team (and your customers) in confidence
At Garçon, the wall facing the line doesn’t just announce the menu, it has a saying:
Don’t think twice about that slice. Your first guess will be the best. Then come back and try the rest.
The whole line experience is by design. Customers face the wall while they wait, read the saying, then come around the corner to the menu. By the time they’re ordering, they’re ready… and confident.
That confidence has to live in the food, too. A wall saying means nothing if the pizza doesn’t back it up.
| Your turn: What does your shop say to a first-time customer before they even order? Is there a point of view, or just a menu board? |
4. Your busiest season will expose every weakness.
Salem in October sees enormous crowds around for Halloween.
Garçon’s first year was chaos.
The second year, the shop had a plan: simplify further, redesign the line so people move through it better and stayed entertained while they waited, and focus on making sure staff could execute at speed without the product suffering.
| Your turn: What’s the one thing that breaks down during your busiest hour? Isolate it. Fix just that one thing before your next peak. |
5. A bigger space doesn’t have to mean a bigger menu.
Garson is two floors, 2,000 square feet each (plus basement storage).
Keenan doesn’t fill the shop with a bigger menu or more concepts, though. The space is as an experience: birthday parties, room to breathe, a line that flows properly. The space became an asset for hospitality without adding a single item to the menu.
More space doesn’t mean more complexity. It means more comfort for the same focused menu.
| Your turn: Is there anything about your space that you’ve been treating as a limitation that could actually be an asset? Could you use it without adding menu items? |
6. Happy staff is a strategy, not a bonus.
Running a 12-person team in a small-format shop is its own management challenge. Keeping people happy is genuinely hard. It’s easy to talk about, not easy to do.
However, when everyone knows every station, dough, toppings, oven, sandwiches, nobody feels stuck. There’s movement, flexibility, and shared ownership of the outcomes. That matters for staff retention.
And the kitchen being fully open to the dining room creates accountability in both directions. Customers love seeing the pizza being made. Staff know they’re always visible. Make sure you’re doing the right thing, and saying the right thing.
| Your turn: Which of your team members could cover every station right now? Who couldn’t? Build a training plan around closing that gap. |
Forgot to write stuff down as we went? Download the Menu Rebuilder worksheet, print it out, and work through your menu the way Keenan did, item by item, with brutal honesty.
Ready to run a tighter, more profitable shop?
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