Menu Engineering
Also called: menu analysis
What is Menu Engineering?
Menu engineering classifies every dish by two measures — how popular it is and how much contribution it earns — then uses the resulting quadrants to decide what to promote, reprice, rework or remove.
Why Menu Engineering matters
Most menus are inherited rather than designed. Menu engineering usually finds a handful of dishes that are popular but barely profitable, and repricing or reworking just those moves the whole month.
How Menu Engineering works in practice
Classify dishes into stars (popular and profitable), plowhorses (popular, low margin), puzzles (profitable, unpopular) and dogs (neither). Promote stars, rework plowhorses, reposition puzzles and cut dogs.
Worked example
A plowhorse selling 400 plates a month at ₹40 contribution gains ₹8,000 from a ₹20 price rise, if volume holds.
Frequently asked questions
Quarterly, and after any significant ingredient price move or menu redesign.