I’m moving the team to a 90-day menu cycle with a Tuesday 3:30 pre-service R&D sprint where station leads own two prototypes and we greenlight one weekly. For those who’ve tried similar, did it lift consistency and cost control without dulling creativity, or did you adjust the tempo?
One tweak: in that pre-service block, run each prototype on the actual station with a live 6–7 min timer and only service mise; if it can’t hit the time cleanly, it doesn’t get the weekly greenlight. That moment saved us on consistency and training costs, but we keep a final-week flex slot in the 90-day cycle so a sleeper dish can bump in without wrecking COGS. @kitchenteam do you track pass times or waste on sprint days?
We had good results by freezing vendors and primary proteins for the quarter and forcing prototypes to use trim/cross-mise — consistency and COGS went up without killing ideas, like a setlist with room for solos… Only caveat: in peak produce swings we shorten to 60 days and do a quick week‑5 keep/kill off POS sales vs. waste, then freeze changes. @miller77, have you tried a small guest QR pulse before greenlighting, or is that overkill?
90-day cycle clicked for us once we set a hard CM floor and a day-30 “SKU creep audit” — pull POS mix and waste; if the “greenlight one weekly” pick misses margin twice, it drops to special or gets reworked. Kept creativity by holding one sandbox slot outside the lock while everything else stayed fixed. Are you locking prices for the quarter or allowing mid-cycle reprices when markets jump?
One thing that kept us creative without killing margins was a simple rule: “no new component without a cut” plus a 6-touch cap on the plate; if a prototype breaks either, it replaces an existing prep or gets parked. We added a quick FOH taste at lineup and a two-service kill switch if ticket times jump 20%, and it boosted consistency without slowing the sprint. You could also score “prep debt” (like luggage weight at the gate) at 3:15 so station leads walk in with a target, @lucas_m89.