Menu engineering calculator
Enter what each dish sold, its price and its plate cost. See which dishes are stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs, and what to do about each. Free, no sign-up.
Don't know a dish's plate cost yet? Work it out with the food cost calculator.
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The menu engineering matrix, explained
Menu engineering, from Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith's 1982 method, looks at each dish on two scales: popularity (its share of dishes sold) and profitability (its contribution margin, the menu price minus the plate cost).
Stars: popular and profitable
Keep them exactly as they are. Give them the best spots on the menu, keep the recipe and portion consistent, and test a small price increase; guests who love a star rarely notice 50 cents.
Plowhorses: popular, lower margin
Guests love them, so don't cut them. Trim the portion slightly, swap in a cheaper ingredient guests won't miss, nudge the price, or pair them with a high-margin side or drink.
Puzzles: profitable, not popular
They earn well when they sell. Move them to a better spot on the menu, rewrite the description, have staff recommend them, or run them as a special. If nothing works, a small price cut can be worth it.
Dogs: neither
Usually the first to go, which also simplifies prep and ordering. Keep one only if it does a job: the one vegetarian option, or a dish a group of regulars comes in for.
Doing it every month
The matrix is only as good as its plate costs, and those move with every invoice. RestaurantBuddy reads your POS sales reports and supplier invoices, keeps every plate cost current, and re-sorts the menu with specific suggestions for each dish.
Questions
What is menu engineering?
A way to judge every dish on two things at once: how well it sells compared with the rest of the menu, and how many dollars it earns per plate. Each dish lands in one of four groups, stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs, and each group has its own fix.
How does the calculator decide what counts as popular?
It uses the classic Kasavana and Smith rule. A dish is popular if it sells at least 70 percent of an equal share: with 10 dishes, an equal share is 10 percent of sales, so anything above 7 percent counts. A dish is profitable if its margin per plate is at least the menu's average, weighted by how much each dish sells.
Should I use margin in dollars or food cost percentage?
Dollars. You pay rent with dollars, not percentages. A $29 short rib at a 40 percent food cost can earn more per plate than a $7 basket of fries at 20 percent.
What period should I use?
A few weeks to a month of sales from your POS, with the menu prices and plate costs from the same period. Compare dishes from the same menu section if your menu mixes very different price points.
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