Menu engineering

Menu Engineering is a simple approach to using a marketing orientation to help generate additional gross profit from a restaurant’s menu.

In its truest sense, the term menu engineering refers to the specific restaurant menu analysis methodology developed at Michigan State University in the early 1980’s.

By using guest demand (i.e. menu mix) and gross profit margins, the relative performance of each menu item can be readily determined. Associated with the process is the identification and classification system using the terms star, plowhorse, loser and puzzle.

A star is an item that is both popular and profitable, a plowhorse is unprofitable but popular, a loser is unprofitable and unpopular and puzzles are profitable but unpopular.

Several variations to this methodology have been developed at other hotel and restaurant schools around the country which have had qualified results.

Over the years, the term “menu engineering” has become a buzzword which has come to mean “doing something/anything to improve menu performance”, slang for the generic use of the term. As a result, the understanding of the whole process has become less clearly defined and has resulted in a preponderance of misapplication and misuse.

In the hands of a skilled practitioner, menu engineering can be a powerful tool which “points” to a wide range of strategies and tactics which can lead to significant increases in the profitability of restaurant menus and in guest satisfaction.