Menu Engineering Matrix

Menu engineering is a methodology developed by Kasavana and Smith that classifies menu items along two axes: profitability (unit margin) and popularity (sales volume). The result is a 4-quadrant matrix that helps you decide which dishes to promote, reposition, reformulate, or remove.

Stars: high popularity and high margin — your top dishes, promote them. Puzzles: high margin but low popularity — profitable but underselling, improve placement or description. Plowhorses: high popularity but low margin — they sell a lot but contribute little, raise price or cut cost. Dogs: low popularity and low margin — candidates for removal or full reinvention.

Ideally at least quarterly, or every time you change the menu. The most profitable restaurants do it monthly because raw material costs and consumption patterns shift constantly. It's also worth running after every supplier change or price adjustment.

It's the percentage of sales of that dish over the total sales of all dishes analyzed. If you sell 100 dishes a month and one sells 15 times, its popularity is 15%. The threshold to consider a dish "popular" is the average: with 10 dishes, the threshold is 10%.

Analyze all dishes within the same category or section (starters, mains, desserts). Minimum 5-6 dishes for the analysis to be meaningful. Don't mix categories — a 6 EUR dessert isn't comparable to an 18 EUR main.