Menu Mix
Also called: sales mix, item mix
What is Menu Mix?
Menu mix is the distribution of sales across items — what share of covers each dish accounts for. It is the popularity half of menu engineering and drives the blended food cost of the whole restaurant.
Why Menu Mix matters
Blended food cost can rise without any recipe or price changing, purely because customers shifted toward lower-margin dishes. Menu mix is the only way to see that shift.
Menu Mix formula
Item mix % = Units sold of item ÷ Total units sold × 100
Weighting contribution by mix gives the blended contribution per cover.
How Menu Mix works in practice
Pull item-wise sales counts from your POS monthly and compare them with contribution per item. Where the mix is drifting toward plowhorses, menu layout and staff recommendations are the fastest levers.
Frequently asked questions
Almost always a menu mix shift toward dishes with higher food cost percentages.