Every dish on your menu has a job: some make you money and others cost you money. Enter your sales, costs and prices, and in five minutes you’ll know which is which and what to do with each one.
We cross two figures for each dish: how much it sells (popularity) and how much it leaves after paying for the ingredients (contribution margin). The result is four types of dish.
Sells well and leaves a good margin. The heart of your menu: protect it and give it the best spot.
Leaves a good margin but sells little. It has potential: make it visible and have the floor team recommend it.
Sells well but leaves little. Your guests want it: adjust price, portion or cost without it showing.
Neither sells nor leaves margin. It takes up space on the menu and in the cold room: redesign it or drop it.
A dish is popular if it sells at least 70% of what it would get if sales were split equally across all dishes. Its margin is high if it beats the menu’s weighted average margin. Analyse the same period for every dish and, if you can, each category (starters, mains, desserts) separately.
| Category | Dish | Units sold | Cost per portion (€) | Selling price (€) |
|---|
You can paste straight from Excel: copy the Dish, Units, Cost and Price columns (or Category, Dish, Units, Cost and Price), click any cell and paste.