Independent cafés don’t fail because they lack creativity.
They fail because menu decisions are made without a decision system.
New drinks look exciting on paper. They follow trends, copy what’s working elsewhere, or come from genuine passion for flavour. Yet, once launched, many quietly disappear — wasting time, ingredients, and staff energy.
This isn’t a talent problem. It’s a structural one.
Below are the real reasons menu decisions fail in independent cafés — and why they repeat.
1. Trends Are Treated as Answers, Not Signals
Trends are everywhere: social media, industry reports, competitors’ menus.
The mistake isn’t following trends — it’s treating them as conclusions.
A trend only tells you that interest exists somewhere.
It doesn’t tell you:
- where demand actually converts,
- whether your customers want it,
- or whether it fits your operation.
When cafés skip the step between trend and decision, launches become guesses disguised as research.
2. Popularity Is Confused With Viability
Many menu ideas are popular but not viable.
A drink can be:
- interesting, but too slow to prepare,
- well-liked, but impossible to price sustainably,
- visually appealing, but incompatible with existing ingredients.
Viability lives at the intersection of demand, cost, speed, and consistency.
Most cafés evaluate ideas on taste and excitement first — and only discover operational problems after launch, when it’s already expensive to reverse.
3. Operational Constraints Are Considered Too Late
Independent cafés operate under tight constraints:
- limited suppliers,
- small storage,
- variable staff skill levels,
- peak-time pressure.
Yet menu decisions are often made as if these constraints are flexible.
They aren’t.
When constraints are considered after a drink is designed, teams are forced into compromises:
- cutting steps,
- swapping ingredients,
- reducing quality.
What looked like a strong idea slowly erodes — not because it was bad, but because it ignored reality upfront.
4. Decisions Rely on Experience That Can’t Be Shared
Experienced operators often have good instincts.
But intuition doesn’t scale and rarely transfers cleanly across teams.
When decisions live in someone’s head:
- they’re hard to explain,
- impossible to audit,
- and difficult to challenge constructively.
This leads to repeated debates, slow approvals, and inconsistent outcomes — especially as teams grow or locations multiply.
Good judgement without structure becomes fragile.
5. Failure Is Discovered Only After Commitment
Most cafés only learn a decision was wrong after they’ve committed:
- stock has been ordered,
- staff trained,
- menus printed.
At that point, the cost of being wrong is already paid.
What’s missing is a pre-launch decision layer — a way to test viability before resources are locked in.
Without it, cafés rely on trial-and-error not because they want to, but because there is no alternative framework.
6. Menu Decisions Aren’t Treated as Systems Problems
Menu planning is often framed as a creative task.
In reality, it’s a systems problem.
Every decision touches:
- supply chains,
- service speed,
- pricing,
- customer expectations,
- and risk tolerance.
When these factors aren’t evaluated together, decisions optimise one dimension while breaking another.
That’s why good ideas fail quietly — not dramatically, but consistently.
The Real Problem Isn’t Creativity
Independent cafés are full of creativity.
What they lack is a repeatable way to decide what’s worth launching.
Menu decisions fail not because cafés choose badly — but because they’re forced to choose without a system that reflects how cafés actually operate.
Until decisions are treated as structured, explainable processes — failure will continue to look random, even when it isn’t.
This is exactly the gap MakeOrNot is built to address.
Reference
Harvard Business Review — Why New Products Fail