Restaurants offer menus with smaller portions to meet changing tastes

The biggest new restaurant trend is small. Special menus with petite, less expensive portions are popping up at large chains like Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory as well as trendy urban eateries and rural retreats. Restaurants hope that offering smaller servings beyond the children’s menu will meet many different diners’ needs, whether it's saving money, losing weight or environmental concerns. Some restaurants are adding menus to court users of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Zepbound and Wegovy. Smaller portions aren’t a new concept. Twenty years ago, small-plate tapas restaurants were all the rage, for instance. The president of a culinary consulting firm says the scaled-down dishes appearing now seem part of a longer-term shift.