Menu engineering calculator
Enter price, food cost and portions sold for each dish: you get the menu engineering matrix and what to do with every item.
Add at least 2 dishes with price and portions sold to see the matrix.
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Free for your blog, school or client site: paste this code where you want the calculator to appear.
Your dishes stay in this browser (localStorage): nothing is sent to a server.
How the menu engineering matrix works
Menu engineering (Kasavana and Smith, 1982) classifies every dish on two axes. Popularity: a dish is popular if it sells at least 70% of the average portions per dish. Profitability: a dish is profitable if its unit margin (price minus food cost) is at least the average margin weighted by sales. Stars are popular and profitable, plowhorses popular but low-margin, puzzles profitable but rarely ordered, dogs neither.
Frequently asked questions
What is menu engineering?
It is a method to analyse a menu by crossing how much each dish sells with how much it earns per portion. The result is a matrix with four categories (stars, plowhorses, puzzles, dogs), each with a different action: keep, reprice, promote or remove.
Which numbers do I need?
For each dish: selling price, food cost per portion and how many portions you sold in the same period (a month is ideal). Prices with or without VAT are both fine, as long as you are consistent for every dish.
Why is the popularity threshold 70% of the average?
It is the rule proposed by Kasavana and Smith: with N dishes, each would sell 1/N of the total if demand were even. A dish is considered popular if it reaches at least 70% of that share.
Is my data saved anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser and the dishes are kept only in this device's local storage. You can download everything as a CSV.
Can I get this matrix automatically?
Yes: in GrazieChef the menu engineering report uses the real orders taken at the table and the cost you enter once per dish, so the matrix updates by itself.
Stop counting portions by hand
With GrazieChef every order taken at the table feeds the menu engineering report: sales per dish are always up to date.