Menu strategy
Menu Engineering Tool
Plot every menu item by how well it sells and how much it makes — see at a glance what to feature, reprice, rework or cut.
How to use this tool
Menu Engineering
When to use this tool
Use it to review an existing menu and decide what to do with each dish — which to feature, reprice, rework or take off — based on how popular and how profitable each one is. It works best on a menu that has been selling long enough to give you real figures for the period.
Currency, tax & royalties
These live in the toolbar and work the same on every tool:
- Currency
- Pick your currency from the selector — it relabels the tax field to match your region.
- Tax rate
- Type your tax rate in the field beside the currency, or set it to 0 if you don’t want to factor in tax.
- Royalties / commission
- Optional. Switch on “Factor in royalties or commission” to open a panel where you set the rate with the slider (or type it exactly), rename it Royalty or Commission, and charge it on net or gross sales.
Menu engineering features
What you enter for this tool, and what it tells you:
- Your menu items
- For each dish: its name, what it costs you to make (ex tax), the price you sell it at (inc tax) and how many you sold in the period. Paste from a spreadsheet, or use the template buttons below.
- The four groups
- Each item is classed as a Star (popular and profitable), Plough horse (popular but low margin), Puzzle (profitable but slow) or Dog (low sales, low margin) — relative to your menu’s own averages.
- The matrix
- Every item plotted by popularity across and contribution up, with dividers at the menu averages, so you can see each dish’s group at a glance.
- Recommended actions
- What to do with each group — feature, reprice, rework or cut. Loss‑making items are flagged in red wherever they appear.
- Result & export
- Read the groups and actions, then export a clean PDF report to print or share.
Your data
These buttons sit in the “Your data” panel at the foot of the page and work the same on every tool:
- Download template
- Downloads a blank Excel template you can fill in offline.
- Upload template
- Reads a filled‑in template back in and fills the tool in one go.
- Save scenario
- Saves everything you’ve entered to a file you can back up or share.
- Load scenario
- Re‑opens a menu you saved earlier.
- PDF report
- Generates a clean PDF of the analysis, ready to save, print or share.
Jargon buster
- Contribution
- Net revenue less cost of sales and any royalty or commission — what a sale adds before labour and overheads.
- Cost of sales (C.O.S)
- What the product costs you to make or buy — ingredients, packaging and waste — usually shown as a % of net revenue. Excludes labour and overheads.
- Gross profit & %
- Net revenue less cost of sales; the % expresses it as a share of net revenue — the mirror of cost‑of‑sales %.
- Gross revenue
- The total the customer pays, including tax.
- Labour
- The wage cost of the staff involved, usually shown as a cash figure or a % of net revenue.
- Margin of safety
- How far sales could fall before you stop making a profit — the cushion between your forecast and break‑even.
- Net revenue
- Gross revenue with tax removed — all the margin maths is worked on this figure.
- Royalty / commission
- A fee paid as a % of each sale, charged on net or gross. Optional — switch it on only if your business pays one.
Royalty — rate and how it's charged
Menu items — inputs & classification
This table is wide — scroll it sideways to see every column.
Recommended actions — what to do with each group
- Move them to a more visible spot on the menu.
- Rewrite the name or description to make them tempting.
- Promote them — specials, staff recommendations, tasters.
- Bundle one with a Star, or trial a slightly lower price.
- Feature them prominently — prime menu positions, photos, specials.
- Protect the recipe, portion and quality so they stay consistent.
- Hold the price; strong demand can usually absorb a small, careful rise.
- Keep them always in stock and train staff to recommend them.
- Cut them from the menu unless there's a clear reason to keep them.
- If keeping, rework the recipe to cut cost to lift contribution.
- Reprice only where there's genuine demand to support it.
- Reuse the ingredients in better sellers, or replace with a tested new dish.
- Nudge the price up a little — high volume makes small rises add up.
- Trim the recipe cost: portion size, spec, or supplier price.
- Don't over-feature them; steer attention to higher-margin items.
- Upsell a high-margin side or drink alongside it to grow the total bill.
The matrix — popularity across, profit up
The dividers mark the menu averages — items to the right sell above average, items above earn above-average contribution per unit. Contribution is net revenue (ex tax) minus food cost, before labour and overheads.
Your data — import, save and share
Template
Download an Excel template, fill it in offline, and upload it back to populate.
Save & restore
Save your settings to a file you can back up, share or reload later.
PDF report
Generate a report of the analysis, ready to save or share.