Menus should have more intelligence built in. Maybe a prompt or two to get a feel for what a person may want to eat. Or even just listing in order of most popular.
This, instead of presenting a bunch of items, or only segmenting by category.
In general, the need to navigate the entire menu is reflective of a bigger problem, which is that nobody ever knows what they want to eat for a given meal.
If somebody can algorithmically solve this in a personalized way, that would be a quality of life improvement beyond fixing mobile menu formats.
Matter of fact, give me an app that spans multiple restaurant menus, understands my preferences over time, and keeps track of what I've recently eaten, then suggests my next meal.
As a very first step, offer a "must contain/exclude meat" option which would give us an average saving that trends towards 50%. Then identify the most common allergies/preferences and many people could have a typical menu trimmed down enough so that it fits one page on their mobile screen.
That's the thinking. I don't eat red meat or pork, so, for the average restaurant, my option set generally trends towards 20% to 25%. But, I generally have to browse the burger section to ensure they didn't bury a turkey burger in it.
Yeah, I like to experiment too sometimes, and the option to browse could still be available. It's pretty easy to pull off and is the standard now.
But even with that, your experimentation could be guided. And, man, most times I find myself just needing to eat something versus embarking on some great culinary quest. So, more often than not, it's just one more thing to solve.
This, instead of presenting a bunch of items, or only segmenting by category.
In general, the need to navigate the entire menu is reflective of a bigger problem, which is that nobody ever knows what they want to eat for a given meal.
If somebody can algorithmically solve this in a personalized way, that would be a quality of life improvement beyond fixing mobile menu formats.
Matter of fact, give me an app that spans multiple restaurant menus, understands my preferences over time, and keeps track of what I've recently eaten, then suggests my next meal.