Menu Engineering: How to Arrange Dishes to Increase Average Ticket Size

Your menu is your restaurant's business card, and it's crucial to arrange dishes strategically to increase the average ticket size. Menu engineering is a technique that helps optimize dish placement to maximize sales and profits.

What is menu engineering

Menu engineering is a discipline that studies how to arrange dishes on a menu to influence customer choices and increase sales. This technique is based on the analysis of sales data and customer behavior to identify the most effective strategies for increasing the average ticket size.

Sales data analysis

To apply menu engineering, it's essential to analyze your restaurant's sales data. This includes analyzing sales per dish, portion sizes, prices, and customer purchasing habits. With this data, you can identify the most popular dishes and those that generate the most profits.

Example of sales data analysis

For example, if your restaurant sells 100 pasta dishes per day, and the most popular dish is spaghetti carbonara, which costs 12€ and has a 30% profit margin, you can consider increasing the price of this dish or offering a premium version to increase the average ticket size.

Menu engineering strategies

There are several menu engineering strategies you can apply to increase the average ticket size. Some of the most common include:

• The anchoring technique, which involves placing a very expensive dish at the beginning of the menu to make other dishes seem more affordable.
• The scarcity technique, which involves limiting the availability of a dish to create a sense of urgency and increase sales.
• The bundle technique, which involves offering a package of dishes at a fixed price to increase the average ticket size.

To learn more about creating a digital menu, you can consult our guide on creating a digital menu.

Digital menu and menu engineering

A digital menu can be an excellent tool for applying menu engineering. With a digital menu, you can easily update prices and dish descriptions, and you can also use marketing techniques like personalization and dish recommendations to increase sales.

To learn more about using a digital menu with QR code, you can consult our guide on menus with QR code.

In practice

To apply menu engineering in your restaurant, you can follow these steps:

1. Analyze your restaurant's sales data to identify the most popular dishes and those that generate the most profits.
2. Apply menu engineering strategies like anchoring, scarcity, and bundle to increase the average ticket size.
3. Use a digital menu to easily update prices and dish descriptions, and to use marketing techniques like personalization and dish recommendations.

To learn more about increasing your restaurant's Google reviews, you can consult our guide on increasing Google reviews.