Menu engineering is the systematic analysis of the profitability and popularity of each dish on your menu to make data-driven decisions. It classifies each dish into a four-quadrant matrix (star, workhorse, puzzle, dog) and tells you exactly what to keep, what to promote, what to reformulate, and what to remove. A restaurant with applied menu engineering can increase its average ticket by 15-25% without raising prices or changing concept.
- Your menu has had the same dishes for more than a year without sales analysis
- You don't know which dishes are the best sellers NOR the most profitable — and they're not the same
- The waiters don't know which dishes to recommend to maximize the check
- You've added dishes based on intuition without calculating whether they add or subtract from margin
- Your menu has more than 40 items and you don't know which ones to remove
- The visual design of your menu does not guide the customer toward the most profitable dishes
If you recognize 2 or more of these situations, your restaurant needs a professional diagnosis.
