Ordering the Same Dishes Every Time

Have you noticed that when you go to your favorite restaurant (or one of the many restaurants you visited before), you look at the menu and order the same dishes you ordered last time you were there?  If you do this, you are not alone.  I went to a Japanese restaurant last weekend and I ordered the same salmon sashimi during my previous visit:

Why do we do this?  Isn't it boring to eat the same dishes every time in the same restaurant?  Don't we want to explore the wild?  Here are a couple of reasons:

1. Reading the menu is a waste of time.  We go to restaurants because we want to eat.  We hate spending all the time only deciding what to eat and not eating.
2. People are afraid of change.  It is a safer investment to order the dishes we know we like, rather than take the risks to order something new and it turns out to be bad.

Any restaurants practicing any sort of customer relationship management strategies can exploit this behavior .

1. Instead of giving the customers a menu, ask the customers if they want to order the same dishes based on their past ordering history.  Now that is customer service.
2. Reduce the operation costs by getting rid of dishes that aren't popular.
3. Focus on improving existing dishes instead of designing new dishes.
4. Cross-sell new dishes that may be of interest to the customers given what they usually order.

Remember that only the food in a restaurant is not enough to keep customers from coming back.  The atmosphere, the service (very important), the hygiene etc are all important factors in creating royal customers.