The Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Menu Engineering
Menu engineering is an interdisciplinary field that studies how to structure your food selections to maximize restaurant profits. By analyzing both raw item popularity and profit margin contribution, we categorize dishes into four distinct classes. Let us inspect how to display these on your AztecMenu QR dashboard.
The Four Menu Engineering Categories
- Stars (High Profit, High Popularity): These are your best items. They sell frequently and have excellent profit margins. Place them prominently with beautiful photos at the top of your digital menu page.
- Plowhorses (Low Profit, High Popularity): Guests love these, but they have thin profit margins (e.g. standard burgers or pasta carbonara). Try to slightly increase the price or reduce portion costs.
- Puzzles (High Profit, Low Popularity): These have excellent margins but are hard to sell. Use descriptive copy and list them as "Chef Recommendations" on the digital interface to boost orders.
- Dogs (Low Profit, Low Popularity): These items are unprofitable and unpopular. Remove them from your database to simplify guest choices.
Optimizing Your Digital Layout
In a print menu, you are limited by physical space. With digital layouts, you can highlight high-profit Puzzles using visual accents. Use specialized diet tags and bold headings to ensure your high-margin dishes capture guest attention during order browsing.