🎟️ Menu Engineering Optimisation Checklist
Stop losing margin on your highest-selling items before the next trading month starts. Here is your operational blueprint.
In The Science of Profitable Menu Engineering, we covered Price Anchoring, Decoy Pricing, and Primacy and Recency Effects. In this VIP edition, you will learn how to identify high-margin dishes, optimise your physical layout, and implement precise pricing mechanics without increasing ingredient costs, adding operational complexity, or spending days analysing spreadsheets.
📄 On the Menu
Identifying High Margin Performers
Grouping & Layout Dynamics
Pricing Mechanics, Anchoring & Strategy
Digital & Phygital Checklist
Approvals Checklist
Let’s Check In ☕
🧮 Identifying High Margin Performers
Commercial reality dictates that raw volume does not guarantee profitability. To accurately categorise your menu performance, you must first establish your precise baseline costs.
Here’s what needs to be included in the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) calculation for each dish:
Raw Ingredients & Proteins: The precise cost of the main component, e.g. the exact weight of the steak, fish, or vegetable
Sub-Recipes & Prep Components: The cost of sauces, marinades, dressings, or purees made in-house that go onto the plate.
Garnishes & Seasonings: Herbs, micro-greens, cooking oils, butter, salt, and spices used during cooking or plating.
Item-Specific Packaging: Any disposable or branded items that must leave the kitchen with that specific dish, e.g. takeaway boxes, burger wraps, branded greaseproof paper, or skewers
Everything else, including kitchen labour, gas, electricity, rent, or general wastage margins, must be excluded. This keeps the calculation strictly limited to the direct cost of producing that single plate.
[ ] Pull Your Sales Data: Export a 90-day product mix report from your EPOS system and segment it by category.
[ ] Audit Your COGS: Input direct costs into the spreadsheet tool (Include ingredients/packaging; exclude labour/utilities).
[ ] Run the Spreadsheet Matrix: Identify where each dish lands based on the automated popularity and profitability dropdowns.
⚠️ A word of warning
The classic Boston Consulting Group matrix taught every marketing consultant in the world to find the “Dogs“ (low popularity, low profitability) and delete them from the menu to reduce bloat. However, this could be a costly mistake. If you delete an unpopular, low-margin dish without realising it was serving as the psychological contrast anchor for your top seller, the sales of your highest-margin Stars items will instantly plummet.
Use this Spreadsheet to categorise your dishes
