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Kitchen deep cleaning - menu and margin
Menu engineering is designing your menu using what you know about each dish's popularity and profitability - to steer customers towards your best dishes (the popular, profitable ones) and away from the poor ones. Done well, it sells more of what makes you money. Here is menu engineering: making your best dishes sell. This is general commentary.
The short answer
Menu engineering is a disciplined way of designing your menu to make it more profitable, using data about your dishes. The core idea is that not all dishes are equal - some are popular (they sell well) and some are not; some are profitable (good margin) and some are not - and by understanding each dish on these two dimensions (popularity and profitability), you can design the menu to sell more of the good dishes and less of the poor ones. The classic framework classifies each dish into one of four groups based on high/low popularity and high/low profitability: stars (popular and profitable - your best dishes, which you want to sell lots of); plough-horses (popular but low-profit - they sell well but make little, so you want to improve their profitability or use their popularity carefully); puzzles (profitable but unpopular - good margin but they do not sell, so you want to sell more of them, or reposition them); and dogs (unpopular and low-profit - they neither sell nor make money, so candidates to drop or rework). Knowing which dishes are which is the basis of menu engineering. Then you design the menu to steer sales towards the best dishes - principally the stars (popular and profitable). This uses menu design and psychology: placing the best dishes where they get attention (menus have areas that draw the eye, and prominent placement, highlighting, or good descriptions draw customers to a dish), presenting them attractively (appealing descriptions, good positioning), and generally making the best dishes prominent and appealing - while giving less prominence to the poor ones. The aim is to make it more likely customers choose your stars (selling more of your popular, profitable dishes) and less likely they choose the dogs. You also act on the other groups: improving the profitability of plough-horses (popular but low-margin - e.g. tweaking cost or price carefully), promoting or repositioning puzzles (profitable but unpopular - making them more appealing or prominent to sell more), and dropping or reworking dogs (neither popular nor profitable). So menu engineering means classifying your dishes by popularity and profitability, then designing the menu to sell more of your best dishes (the stars) and to fix or drop the weak ones - improving the overall profitability of what you sell. It rests on knowing your dish data (which needs good costing and sales information) and on the dishes being good (menu engineering sells more of good dishes; it is not a substitute for good food). This is general commentary on menu design and profitability.
Key points
What it is
Menu engineering is a disciplined approach to designing your menu to make it more profitable, using data about how your dishes perform. The starting insight is that dishes are not all equal: some sell well (popular) and some do not; some make good money (profitable) and some do not. If you understand each dish on these two dimensions - popularity (how much it sells) and profitability (how much margin it makes) - you can design the menu deliberately to sell more of the dishes that are good for the business (popular and profitable) and less of those that are not. So menu engineering replaces designing a menu by guesswork or tradition with designing it using dish data - a more deliberate, profit-focused approach.
This matters because the mix of what you sell drives your profitability: selling more of your high-margin, popular dishes and less of your low-margin or unpopular ones improves the overall profitability of the business, without necessarily changing prices or the menu's size - just shifting the sales mix towards the better dishes. Menu engineering is the tool for doing this: understanding the dishes (classifying them by popularity and profitability) and then designing the menu to steer sales towards the best ones. So it is a way to improve profitability by managing the sales mix through menu design. The following sections cover it: classifying the dishes (the four groups), designing the menu to sell the best dishes, acting on the other groups, and the foundations it rests on. Understanding what menu engineering is - designing the menu with dish data to sell more of your best dishes - frames the rest. So menu engineering is deliberate, data-informed menu design for profitability. This is general commentary.
Classify the dishes
The basis of menu engineering is classifying each dish by its popularity and profitability - the classic framework using four groups. Each dish is assessed on two dimensions: how popular it is (does it sell well, or poorly?) and how profitable it is (does it make a good margin, or a poor one?). Combining high/low on each gives four groups. Stars: popular and profitable - these are your best dishes (they sell well and make good money), so you want to sell lots of them. Plough-horses (or workhorses): popular but low-profit - they sell well but make little margin, so they drive sales volume but not much profit per dish, and you want to improve their profitability or use their popularity carefully. Puzzles: profitable but unpopular - they make a good margin but do not sell much, so you are missing out on their profitability, and you want to sell more of them (or reposition them). Dogs: unpopular and low-profit - they neither sell well nor make money, so they earn their place least, and are candidates to drop or rework.
Knowing which dishes fall into which group is the essential basis of menu engineering, because it tells you what to do with each dish: sell more stars, improve or manage plough-horses, promote or reposition puzzles, and drop or rework dogs. This classification requires data: you need to know each dish's popularity (from sales data - how much each dish sells) and its profitability (from costing - each dish's margin, which requires knowing the dish costs and prices). So menu engineering rests on having this dish data (sales and costing), which lets you classify the dishes accurately. With the classification done, you can design the menu and act on the dishes deliberately (covered next). So the first step is to classify your dishes by popularity and profitability into the four groups - identifying your stars (best dishes), plough-horses, puzzles and dogs - as the basis for everything else. This is the analytical heart of menu engineering: understanding each dish's performance. So classify the dishes into stars, plough-horses, puzzles and dogs. This is general commentary.
Sell the best dishes
The core action of menu engineering is designing the menu to steer sales towards your best dishes - principally the stars (popular and profitable) - using menu design and presentation. Once you know your best dishes, you make the menu work to sell more of them. This uses how customers read and respond to a menu: menus have areas and features that draw attention and influence choice, so you place and present your best dishes to take advantage of this. Prominent placement: put the best dishes where they get attention - menus have prime positions (areas the eye is drawn to), so placing stars prominently (rather than buried) makes customers more likely to see and choose them. Highlighting and presentation: draw attention to the best dishes through design - highlighting them (a box, a feature, a callout), giving them appealing, appetising descriptions (good descriptions sell dishes), and presenting them attractively - so they stand out and appeal. Careful use of price presentation: presenting prices in ways that keep the focus on the dish and value rather than just the number (menu-design practice around how prices are shown) can help too.
The aim is to make it more likely that customers choose your stars (selling more of your popular, profitable dishes) and less likely they gravitate to the poor ones (so the dogs and low-value dishes get less prominence). By steering the sales mix towards the best dishes through menu design, you sell more of what makes money - improving profitability without necessarily changing the food or prices, just influencing what customers choose. This is the heart of making your best dishes sell: designing the menu (placement, highlighting, descriptions, presentation) to draw customers to the stars. It should be done tastefully and honestly (guiding customers to genuinely good dishes, presented well - not manipulating them into poor choices), so customers get good dishes and the business sells its best ones. So design the menu to steer sales towards your best dishes - prominent placement, highlighting, appealing descriptions - making the stars sell. This is the core action, turning the dish classification into more sales of the good dishes. So make the best dishes prominent and appealing, to sell more of them. This is general commentary.
Act on the rest
Beyond promoting the stars, menu engineering acts on the other groups - improving plough-horses, promoting puzzles, and dropping or reworking dogs - to improve the menu overall. Plough-horses (popular but low-profit): these sell well but make little margin, so the aim is to improve their profitability - for example, reducing their cost (portioning, ingredients, efficiency, without harming the dish), or adjusting their price carefully (a popular dish may bear a modest price increase, though carefully, as popularity can be price-sensitive) - so that their high sales generate more profit. Because they are popular, even a small profitability improvement per dish adds up across the volume. So work to make the plough-horses more profitable, capitalising on their popularity. Handle carefully, though - do not damage a popular dish (its popularity is valuable), so improve profitability without spoiling the dish or deterring its customers.
Puzzles (profitable but unpopular): these make good margin but do not sell, so the aim is to sell more of them - promoting them (making them more prominent and appealing on the menu, as with stars, to lift their sales), or repositioning them (rethinking their description, placement, or the dish itself to make it more appealing) - so their good profitability is realised on more sales. If a puzzle cannot be made to sell despite promotion, it may be reconsidered. So try to turn puzzles into sellers, to capture their profitability. Dogs (unpopular and low-profit): these neither sell nor make money, so they earn their place least - candidates to drop (remove from the menu, freeing space and simplifying) or rework (if there is a reason to keep the dish, change it to make it more popular or profitable). Dropping dogs simplifies the menu and loses little (they were not contributing), and can be good (a tighter menu of better dishes). So drop or rework the dogs. So menu engineering acts on all four groups: promote the stars (sell more of your best), improve the plough-horses (more profit from popular dishes), promote or reposition the puzzles (realise their profitability), and drop or rework the dogs (remove the deadweight). Together, this improves the whole menu's contribution. So act on the other groups too, alongside selling the stars. This is general commentary.
Foundations
So menu engineering means classifying your dishes by popularity and profitability (stars, plough-horses, puzzles, dogs), then designing the menu to sell more of your best dishes (the stars) and to improve, promote or drop the others - improving the overall profitability of what you sell. Done well, it sells more of what makes money, improving profitability by managing the sales mix through menu design and dish management. So it is a valuable tool for a more profitable menu. But it rests on two foundations worth noting.
First, good data: menu engineering depends on knowing your dishes' popularity (sales data) and profitability (costing - each dish's margin, which requires knowing dish costs and prices accurately). So it rests on good sales and costing information - without accurate dish costing especially, you cannot know which dishes are truly profitable, so the classification (and hence the engineering) would be flawed. So good dish costing and sales data underpin menu engineering. Second, genuinely good dishes: menu engineering sells more of your good dishes, but it is not a substitute for good food - it steers customers to your best dishes, but those dishes have to be genuinely good (and the operation has to deliver them well) for the strategy to work and for customers to be satisfied. So menu engineering works on top of good food and a well-run kitchen, not instead of them - it optimises the selling of good dishes, assuming the dishes and their delivery are good. This connects to running a good kitchen: the dishes must be well-made and consistently delivered (which rests on a well-run, well-equipped, clean kitchen), and menu engineering then optimises which of those good dishes sell. So menu engineering rests on good data and genuinely good dishes from a well-run kitchen - on those foundations, it makes your best dishes sell and improves profitability. So build on good data and good food, and engineer the menu to sell your best dishes. This is general commentary on menu design and profitability.
Questions
A disciplined way of designing your menu to make it more profitable, using data about how your dishes perform. The core idea is that dishes are not all equal - some are popular (sell well) and some are not; some are profitable (good margin) and some are not - and by understanding each dish on these two dimensions (popularity and profitability), you can design the menu to sell more of the dishes that are good for the business and less of those that are not. This matters because the mix of what you sell drives your profitability: selling more of your high-margin, popular dishes and less of your low-margin or unpopular ones improves overall profitability, without necessarily changing prices - just shifting the sales mix towards the better dishes. So menu engineering replaces designing a menu by guesswork or tradition with designing it using dish data - classifying the dishes by popularity and profitability, then designing the menu to steer sales towards the best ones. It is a tool to improve profitability by managing the sales mix through menu design. It rests on good dish data (sales and costing) and on the dishes being genuinely good. This is general commentary on menu design and profitability.
The four groups in the classic menu-engineering framework, classifying each dish by high/low popularity and high/low profitability. Stars: popular and profitable - your best dishes (they sell well and make good money), which you want to sell lots of. Plough-horses (or workhorses): popular but low-profit - they sell well but make little margin, so they drive volume but not much profit per dish, and you want to improve their profitability or use their popularity carefully. Puzzles: profitable but unpopular - they make a good margin but do not sell much, so you are missing their profitability and want to sell more of them (or reposition them). Dogs: unpopular and low-profit - they neither sell well nor make money, so they earn their place least and are candidates to drop or rework. Knowing which dishes fall into which group is the essential basis of menu engineering, because it tells you what to do with each: sell more stars, improve or manage plough-horses, promote or reposition puzzles, and drop or rework dogs. The classification requires data - each dish's popularity (from sales data) and profitability (from costing). So classify your dishes into these four groups as the basis for engineering the menu. This is general commentary.
By designing the menu to steer sales towards them - using menu design and presentation. Once you know your best dishes (the stars - popular and profitable), you make the menu work to sell more of them, using how customers read and respond to a menu. Prominent placement: put the best dishes where they get attention - menus have prime positions (areas the eye is drawn to), so placing stars prominently (not buried) makes customers more likely to see and choose them. Highlighting and presentation: draw attention to the best dishes through design - highlighting them (a box, a feature, a callout), giving them appealing, appetising descriptions (good descriptions sell dishes), and presenting them attractively - so they stand out and appeal. The aim is to make it more likely customers choose your stars (selling more of your popular, profitable dishes) and less likely they gravitate to poor ones. This shifts the sales mix towards the best dishes, improving profitability without necessarily changing the food or prices. Do it tastefully and honestly - guiding customers to genuinely good dishes presented well, not manipulating them into poor choices. So make the best dishes prominent and appealing to sell more of them. This is general commentary.
Act on them according to their group. Plough-horses (popular but low-profit): improve their profitability - reduce their cost (portioning, ingredients, efficiency, without harming the dish) or adjust their price carefully (a popular dish may bear a modest increase, but carefully, as popularity can be price-sensitive) - so their high sales generate more profit. Because they are popular, even a small per-dish improvement adds up across the volume. But handle carefully - do not damage a popular dish. Puzzles (profitable but unpopular): sell more of them - promote them (make them more prominent and appealing, as with stars) or reposition them (rethink their description, placement or the dish) - so their good profitability is realised on more sales. Dogs (unpopular and low-profit): they earn their place least - candidates to drop (remove from the menu, freeing space and simplifying) or rework (if there is a reason to keep the dish, change it to make it more popular or profitable). Dropping dogs simplifies the menu and loses little. So improve the plough-horses, promote or reposition the puzzles, and drop or rework the dogs - acting on all the groups, alongside selling more stars, to improve the whole menu's contribution. This is general commentary.
Data on each dish's popularity and profitability - which come from sales data and costing. Popularity: how much each dish sells, from your sales data (which dishes are popular and which are not). Profitability: each dish's margin, from costing - which requires knowing each dish's cost (the cost of making it) and price, so you can work out its margin. So menu engineering rests on good sales and costing information: the sales data tells you popularity, and the dish costing tells you profitability. Accurate dish costing is especially important, because without knowing which dishes are truly profitable, the classification (and hence the whole engineering) would be flawed - you might promote a dish you think is profitable but is not. So good dish costing and sales data underpin menu engineering; it is worth having accurate costings for your dishes and good sales data. With these, you can classify the dishes accurately (stars, plough-horses, puzzles, dogs) and engineer the menu on a sound basis. So the foundations are good sales data and accurate dish costing. Without them, menu engineering is guesswork; with them, it is a sound, data-informed way to improve profitability. This is general commentary.
No - menu engineering sells more of your good dishes, but it is not a substitute for good food. It steers customers towards your best dishes (the stars), but those dishes have to be genuinely good, and the operation has to deliver them well and consistently, for the strategy to work and for customers to be satisfied. Menu engineering optimises which of your dishes sell; it assumes the dishes themselves are good. So it works on top of good food and a well-run kitchen, not instead of them - selling more of good dishes, not making poor ones sell (and it would be self-defeating to drive lots of sales of a dish that then disappoints). This connects to running a good kitchen: the dishes must be well-made and consistently delivered, which rests on a well-run, well-equipped, clean kitchen - and menu engineering then optimises which of those good dishes sell. So build on good food and a well-run kitchen, and use menu engineering to sell more of your best dishes on that foundation. Menu engineering is a valuable profitability tool, but it complements good food and good operations rather than replacing them. So it is a way to sell more of genuinely good dishes, not a substitute for having them. This is general commentary.
Menu engineering sells more of your best dishes - which have to be genuinely good, consistently delivered from a well-run, clean kitchen. Our kitchen deep cleaning and extraction cleaning keep the kitchen genuinely clean, part of the well-run operation that delivers the good dishes. Ask us about keeping your kitchen clean.
