Professional Food and DRINK Consulting

Menu engineering

is the strategic process of designing a restaurant’s menu to maximize profitability and influence customer choices.

It involves analyzing the profitability and popularity of menu items, then organizing them in a way that highlights high-margin, popular dishes while minimizing or reworking less profitable ones. Here’s how menu engineering works:

1. Costing Analysis: Identifying the exact cost of each dish to determine profitability.

2. Categorization: Dishes are categorized into four types based on profitability and popularity: –

Stars: High profitability, high popularity –

Plowhorses: Low profitability, high popularity

Puzzles: High profitability, low popularity 

Dogs: Low profitability, low popularity

3. Strategic Placement: Using psychology and design techniques to place profitable dishes in areas where customers are more likely to notice them (e.g., top right of the menu).

4. Pricing Strategies: Reviewing and adjusting prices based on the menu’s analysis, balancing customer appeal with margins.

Matt Ashton Food and Drink Consultancy can help restaurants implement menu engineering in the following ways:

1. Expert Analysis: Matt Ashton’s team can analyze a restaurant’s current menu, identifying the profitability of each item and making recommendations on which items to promote, rework, or remove.

2. Menu Design: They can redesign the menu to highlight high-margin items, using industry knowledge and design psychology to draw customer attention to these dishes.

3. Recipe Costing: By offering precise costing services, they ensure every dish’s profitability is maximized while controlling costs without compromising quality.

4. Training: They can train your staff to upsell and guide customers toward the most profitable items.

5. Ongoing Consultation: As trends change, the consultancy can continuously update and refine the menu based on market data, seasonality, and customer preferences.

Matt Ashton Consultancy’s expertise can help you improve overall profitability by leveraging data-driven menu design and pricing strategies tailored to your restaurant’s specific market and needs.