Analyze Menu Engineering
Menu engineering ranks every dish on two axes — popularity (portions sold) and profitability (contribution margin per portion) — and sorts each into one of four categories:
| Quadrant | Popularity | Margin | Advice |
|---|---|---|---|
| ⭐ Stars | High | High | Protect and promote |
| 🐎 Plowhorses | High | Low | Raise the price or cut the cost |
| 🔮 Puzzles | Low | High | Market them better or reposition |
| 🐕 Dogs | Low | Low | Review for removal |
How the data is produced
For your chosen date range, Biznsbook reads posted POS sales (portions and revenue per item), matches each to its Active recipe, and uses the nightly theoretical food cost to work out contribution margin. Every dish is compared to the menu averages — a Popularity Index and Margin Index above 1 mean "above average," and those two indices decide the quadrant. Dishes without an active recipe are skipped — there's no food cost to calculate.
Reading the report
Go to Restaurant → Reports → Menu Engineering.
- Pick a From/To range (defaults to the last 30 days) and an optional category, then Apply. Ranges under 7 days show a short-period warning, since narrow windows can misclassify dishes.
- Four summary cards show a count and recommendation per quadrant — click one to filter the table below.
- The matrix is an interactive scatter plot with quadrant lines at the averages and color-coded points — hover any dish for its portions and margin.
- The detail table lists every dish with portions, revenue, food-cost %, contribution margin, and a classification badge. Sort, filter, and Export to Excel.
With Manage recipes, use Recalculate to force an immediate refresh.
:::info Read-only This report analyzes and recommends — it never changes prices or recipes for you. Acting on it (repricing, adjusting a recipe, dropping a dish) is always your call. :::