Guides / Restaurants
Menu engineering: stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs
Sort every item by how much it makes you and how often it sells. Then do the one thing each box asks for.
Skip the reading. The tool does this maths for you, free, as you type.
See your menu sortedMenu engineering is a way of looking at every dish on two axes at once: how much money it leaves you per plate (margin, not food cost %) and how often people order it (popularity). Every item lands in one of four boxes, and each box has one obvious move.
The four boxes
Protect them. Keep quality steady, feature them, never discount them.
People love them but they leave you little. Nudge the price up a little, or trim the portion or ingredient cost.
Good for you, ignored by guests. Move it on the menu, rename it, have servers suggest it.
Rework it or drop it to make room for something that earns.
Why margin, not food cost percent
A $12 pasta at 22% food cost leaves you $9.36. A $34 ribeye at 38% food cost leaves you $21.08. The ribeye has the worse percentage and makes you more than twice as much money. Percent tells you if a plate is priced sanely. Dollars tell you which plates pay the rent.
How the lines are drawn
Margin line: the average margin per plate, weighted by how many of each you sold. Popularity line: 70% of what an item would sell if every item sold equally (so a 10-item menu draws the line at 7% of sales). Items above and right of both lines are stars.
- Stars
- 5 items, 68% of profit
- Plowhorses
- 1 item, 9% of profit
- Puzzles
- 3 items, 19% of profit
- Dogs
- 1 item, 4% of profit
Verdict Three puzzles worth a fifth of the profit that guests walk past. Move them up the menu before touching the dog.
- You need units sold per item for a period. Pull it from your POS; a month is enough.
- Re-sort every quarter, and after any price change.
- Do not drop a dog that is on the menu for a reason (the kids' item, the vegan option). Fix its cost instead.
Now do it with your numbers.
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See your menu sorted