Menu Engineering
Increasing customer profitability through effective
menu design
• Plate
Cost
using
Menu
Analysis
Starting back at the beginning
What have we learned so far?
Moving ahead
Then the fog started to lift…
• Determining
profitability
using Menu
Profitability
Just when you thought you learned it all
• Increasing customer profitability
through effective menu design
Wow!
Now that’s a pretty menu!
Laying out the menu for profitability
• Number of offerings
– Sales volume, storage, workforce, speed of service
• Specials vs. regular items
– Regular items are proven whereas specials are market
tests
• Physical location on the menu
– Does this really matter?
Location
Location
Location
Top 10 Menu Mess-Ups
#10: Year old pricing
#5: Teeny Tiny Fonts
#9: Fried to Perfection
#4: And, And, And, And…
#8: Price List Line Up
#3: Beware of photos
- Has anything about our industry
changed in the last few months?
- Or how about Smothered in gravy?
Yummy.
- Who likes to be price shopped?
#7: Clip Art Crazy
- The older you get the better your eyes
get?
- Who goes out to eat to read a novel?
How long do you have to read a menu?
- Does the picture look like the items
looks on the plate?
- Dancing chickens don’t help sell food or
make profit
#2: Icky, Sticky, Ooey, Gooey
#6: Homemade
#1: Too distressing to discuss…
- What if the chicken salad is listed as
“homemade” but nothing else is?
- Is scratch n’ sniff the best idea?
- Can you guess? Yep, whiteout or
correcting tape!
5 Questions to start a Business Conversation
1. When was the last time you re-did your
menu?
2. What is your most popular item? Is this your
most profitable item? How do you market
that item to your customers?
3. Do you see your menu as a profit center?
4. How do you price your menu? Gross profit $
or Food Cost %?
5. Is your menu as successful as you want?