Restaurant Menu Engineering Worksheet
A menu engineering worksheet for restaurants: plot each menu item by popularity (units sold) and profitability (contribution margin), classify into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs, and decide whether to promote, reprice, or remove. Stop guessing what sells and start data-driven menu decisions.
The four quadrants:
- Stars: High popularity, high profitability — protect and feature
- Plowhorses: High popularity, low profitability — optimize or bundle
- Puzzles: Low popularity, high profitability — promote and reposition
- Dogs: Low popularity, low profitability — reconsider or remove
How to build it:
- Pull sales data (units sold, revenue) from POS
- Calculate contribution margin (price minus plate cost)
- Plot on matrix with averages as axis lines
- Classify and act accordingly
Why it matters: The KPI dashboard shows overall food cost. This worksheet shows which items drive that number and which drag it down.
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