Ordinami.itMenu engineering is a fancy name for a simple idea: cross-referencing how well a dish sells with how much profit it makes, and treating it accordingly. It's the kind of analysis that chains do every month, and that independent restaurants never do, losing profit on dishes that could have been fixed with two moves.
The Matrix: Four Types of Dishes
Take the sales data for a month and, for each dish, calculate the contribution margin: selling price minus ingredient cost. Then, classify each item on two axes, popularity and margin:
- Stars: sell well and have a good margin. They're the heart of the restaurant.
- Workhorses: sell well but have a low margin. Typical of dishes like margherita or carbonara: they keep the restaurant full, not rich.
- Puzzles: have a good margin but sell poorly. Money left on the table.
- Dogs: sell poorly and have a low margin. They occupy menu space, storage, and mindshare.
What to Do with Each
- Stars: protect them. Give them maximum visibility on the menu, photos, and detailed descriptions. Don't change the recipe and only adjust the price with caution: they can withstand small increases.
- Workhorses: work on the cost, not the volume. Review ingredient quantities where it won't be noticed, negotiate with suppliers, or raise the price slightly: on high volumes, fifty cents can add up by the end of the month.
- Puzzles: the problem is either visibility or storytelling. Move them up in the category, rewrite the description, and have staff suggest them. If they don't move after a month, the dish might not be of interest.
- Dogs: eliminate them without regret, unless it's a historic dish that loyal customers are attached to.
The Practical Problem: Data
Menu engineering often gets stuck on data collection: if orders are on paper, reconstructing what you sold in a month is an accountant's job. This is one of the concrete reasons to digitalize: with a digital menu and table orders, each order is recorded, and you know exactly what's coming out of the kitchen. With Ordinami's PRO plan, you get statistics on the most ordered dishes directly in the panel, which is half the work of the matrix already done.
How Often to Repeat the Analysis
Once a season is the right pace: ingredient costs change, and so do tastes. The first analysis is the most laborious because you have to calculate food costs; from the second onwards, it's a routine that takes an hour. And a consultant's tip: don't overhaul the menu in one go. Move, reprice, or eliminate three or four items at a time, and measure what happens before the next move. Also, note the context of each period — the construction site in front of the restaurant, holidays, chef changes — because numbers are read within circumstances: a dish's slump may depend on the dish or the world around it. And for popularity, just use the percentage of sales in the total category: no sophisticated statistics are needed, just consistency.