SME restaurants have reported declined earnings and faced challenges to remain open during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period imposed by the Malaysian government due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. SME decision-makers were observed to be making changes regarding their day-to-day operations and management strategies to mitigate MCO restrictions. This paper aims to review the significant adaptations made by SME restaurants in Malaysia throughout the MCO period. Three (3) prominent areas of adaptations made by decision-makers have been identified based upon ceaseless news reports and media contents. The adaptations made commonly depict actions to (i) Nurture Creativity, (ii) Sustain Reputation, and (iii) Maintain Profitability. The outcomes of this paper provide essential survival guides for SME restauranteurs to embrace the COVID-19 outbreak. These can be helpful to related policy and decision-makers to implement the crucial traits of SME restaurants to reduce the impact on SME restaurants for the foreseeable future.

Menu analysis and revenue management approaches contribute to improving a restaurant's profitability. Yet, both approaches are often implemented independently with constraints. This paper explores the potential of integrating both approaches to improve strategy formulation. Hence, this paper identified the extent of applicability and synergies among both approaches. Findings highlighted that as both approaches become more sophisticated, the practicality of implementation will deprive. The synergies identified the potential to integrate both approaches' performance indicators, cost efficiency data and strategies. Understanding the applicability and synergies of both approaches will lay the foundation for an effective integrated menu analysis and revenue management framework.

IJRM is an interdisciplinary and refereed journal that provides authoritative sources of reference and an international forum in the field of revenue management. IJRM publishes well-written and academically rigorous manuscripts. Both theoretic development and applied research are welcome.

Menu management and analysis is commonly performed by food and beverage establishments to develop, monitor, and modify menu items. However, previous studies seldom associate and study menu management functions concurrently. These functions include but are not limited to menu planning, menu design, menu pricing, menu operation and menu analysis. This exploratory study explored the measures taken by SME restaurant decision-makers in managing their menus. Participants put forward that the measures taken to manage their menus within their establishments are limited by their capabilities and conditions. Participants identified key activities of menu management and analysis as menu development and modification, menu positioning, menu operational efficiency as well as menu pricing and cost control. At the same time, findings showed that key considerations should be given to employees, customers, restaurant resources and the business environment when making decisions pertaining to menu management and analysis. Practitioners in Kuala Lumpur commonly operate their restaurants without specific menu management method, but manages their respective menus depending on the business environment, resources, and capabilities. Furthermore, practitioners seek operational examples and take pricing references from other successful competitors. This study presents that a balance of both quantitative analytics and qualitative reasoning are key to achieving menu profitability.

A restaurant should be operated with passion but managed by profits. Thus, a successful restaurant often depends on a range of approaches to account for performance and profitability. This review discusses two schools of thought that contribute to managing menu profitability; menu analysis and revenue management. The former focuses on altering menu items to achieve profitability but does not focus much on the consumer aspect. The latter, however, seldom concentrate on menu performance, but instead focuses on employee and guest behaviour, spending patterns, dining periods, and altering management procedures to achieve profitability. This review found that there was no significant research on the association between menu analysis and revenue management approaches. Hence leaves a gap to integrate these approaches to achieve better menu profitability management. On a final note, despite a variety of existing approaches which were proven effective, they were not necessarily practical to be implemented.