McDonald's (1948)

The problem

Richard and Maurice McDonald ran a barbecue drive-in in San Bernardino, California. The menu covered barbecued pork, chili, ham and beans and more. When they looked at what actually sold, burgers were the most popular item by far.

What they did

In 1948 they closed for about three months. They cut the menu to nine items, built around a 15-cent hamburger. They rebuilt the kitchen as an assembly line, which they called the Speedee Service System: each worker did one task and finished burgers waited under warming lamps.

What changed

Every item cost less than a quarter, and food came out in seconds instead of minutes. That system became the model the brothers franchised, and later the base of the modern fast-food kitchen.

What you can learn

• Your sales data already knows your menu. Rank every dish by how many you sell and how much each one earns. The bottom of the list is often costing you prep time, stock and space.
• Design the kitchen after the menu, never before. A short menu needs fewer stations, less equipment and less floor space.
• Fewer items, faster tickets. One task per station is how a small team keeps up with a rush.

This is the core of our menu engineering and food costing work, and the reason we fix the menu before drawing a kitchen plan.