What Is Menu Engineering and Why It’s One of the Easiest Ways to Boost Restaurant Profits
When you’re running a restaurant, your menu isn’t just a list of dishes. It’s your business strategy printed in ink. Every item, every price point, and every section of that menu either helps you grow—or holds you back. That’s where menu engineering comes in.
Menu engineering is the process of analyzing and adjusting your menu based on two things: how often each item sells and how profitable it is. The goal is simple: make your menu work harder for you.
This practice isn’t new. Chain restaurants and franchises have been doing it for decades. But more independent operators are now turning to data and design to improve margins, reduce waste, and build a more focused kitchen.
Your Menu Has a Job to Do
If you’re thinking, “I already know what sells,” you’re probably right—but that’s only half the story. Menu engineering helps you ask better questions:
- Are your best-selling items your most profitable?
- Are low-margin dishes dragging down your kitchen’s efficiency?
- Are certain high-profit items being ignored?
Let’s say you run a casual American restaurant. Your grilled chicken sandwich is a steady seller. People love it. But when you check the food cost, you realize your margins are razor thin. Meanwhile, your Korean BBQ wings—which are cheap to make—aren’t moving. That’s a missed opportunity.
Classifying Your Dishes
To make the most of your menu, you need to understand what each item is really doing for your business. Menu engineering sorts items into four categories:
- Stars (popular and profitable)
- Plowhorses (popular but low-profit)
- Puzzles (profitable but low in sales)
- Dogs (low profit, low popularity)
This framework helps you decide what to promote, tweak, or take off the menu.
Real-World Shifts
Let’s go back to those wings. Maybe they’re buried at the bottom of the appetizers. Try moving them up top, rewriting the description to highlight the smoky glaze and house-made dipping sauce. Maybe offer a combo deal that pairs them with a beer.
As for that grilled chicken sandwich? Maybe it needs a slight price bump. Or maybe a swap to a different bun or cheese could shave off 30 cents in food cost. Little changes, big impact.
These aren’t hypotheticals. We’ve seen this play out with clients who thought they needed more foot traffic—when they really just needed to tune their menu.
The Psychology of Pricing
Menu engineering isn’t just about cost percentages and food sales. There’s psychology involved.
For instance, most guests scan menus in a Z-pattern. High-visibility areas, like the top right corner, are prime real estate. Put a high-margin item there.
Other strategies:
- Avoid dollar signs—they remind people they’re spending.
- Use decoy pricing to make mid-range items look like a better deal.
- Bundle smartly. A burger, fries, and soda combo might sell better than the same items listed separately.
Small pricing decisions can have outsized effects. It’s not about tricking guests—it’s about making it easier for them to choose something they’ll enjoy, and you’ll profit from.
Design Supports Strategy
Design plays a big role. A cluttered, text-heavy menu makes it hard for guests to make decisions. A clear, focused layout lets you guide them toward the items you want them to notice.
That doesn’t mean every menu needs to look the same. A neighborhood bistro and a high-volume pizza chain need different designs. But both should follow the same principle: be intentional.
Feature your Stars with subtle design cues: bold text, a shaded box, or a small icon. Place Puzzles where they’ll be noticed. And don’t be afraid to let Dogs go.
Re-Evaluating Regularly
Menus aren’t permanent. They evolve with seasons, ingredient prices, customer feedback, and even kitchen staffing.
We recommend reviewing your menu at least twice a year. Big changes aren’t always needed. Sometimes it’s as simple as swapping out a couple of underperformers, adjusting prices slightly, or tightening up a description.
Some signs it’s time to re-evaluate:
- Food cost increases
- Customer complaints about wait times or value
- Menu fatigue from repeat guests
- Introducing new kitchen staff or equipment
Your menu should reflect what your kitchen does well, what your customers crave, and what your margins can support.
Common Pitfalls
Menu engineering isn’t magic. It’s work. And it only works if you track your data and stay objective.
Here are some mistakes to avoid:
- Keeping a dish just because “it’s always been there”
- Pricing based only on what competitors charge
- Using vague item names that don’t explain what’s on the plate
- Making decisions without knowing actual food cost per item
Emotion plays a big role in menu design, especially when you’ve personally created dishes. But engineering is about stepping back and looking at the numbers.
What It Looks Like in Practice
When we work with a client on menu engineering, we usually start by pulling food cost reports, POS data, and prep time estimates. We compare those to guest favorites, order frequency, and even ticket time data.
From there, we identify:
- Which dishes should be featured more prominently
- Which should be reworked or removed
- How pricing could better align with perceived value
- Where kitchen bottlenecks may be caused by overly complex menu items
We’ve had clients increase check averages by $2 per guest, simply by reshuffling their menus and rethinking a few items.
Menu Engineering Isn’t Just for Full-Service Restaurants
Quick service, fast casual, and even food trucks benefit from this. Any business with a printed, posted, or digital menu can gain from better design and data.
In fact, smaller operations often benefit the most. Their margins are tighter, their kitchens smaller, and their menus more focused. Every item matters.
Conclusion
Menu engineering is one of the most accessible ways to improve your restaurant’s performance. It doesn’t require a full rebrand, a new chef, or expensive ingredients. It just requires attention to detail, honest evaluation, and a willingness to make small changes.
When done right, it helps you sell more of what makes you money, reduce what doesn’t, and give your guests a better experience—without changing who you are.
That’s what a good menu does. And with engineering, it can do it even better.
Walter and Leah worked in our newly developed retro dinner for 4 months. There work was thorough and offered us numerous insights to improve our operations, services, kitchen systems and great menu items that are profitable.
Chef Services is the total restaurant development package, a hands-on consultant throughout the creative and opening phases of the restaurant development from operating systems to food and menu perfection.
When I needed to change the theme of my restaurant and bring new innovative products to our menu and design changes I engaged the Chef Services for these results. For my Latin Grill in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from menu, logo to equipment selection and training in the Middle East the CSG team followed us through to opening.
Walter came to Slade Gorton in 2001 – 2013 and brought innovation and vision to our line of seafood products “Gourmet Bay”. The culinary, nutrition and food science resource Chef Services brought to our development of new products is what gave us a very high level of competitive products. The creative genius delivered home run products for our fresh valued add line of fish products, Bourbon Salmon, Toasted Crumb Line, Salmon Burger line, and many other great flavor concepts that still perform for us in the market place.
Walter and the Chef Services Group team were the perfect fit for our culinary consulting needs. From menu brainstorming sessions to hands on training, CSG was able to bring our ideas to life. Without there level of resources our identity, menu, recipes and operational design would have been approached much differently. Walter’s particular expertise allows him to keep operational efficiencies in mind throughout the food creation process.
Very professional. Excellent at organizing and structuring projects.
I found working with Walter was much more than a project for him. Walter and his team where passionate and treated my project as their own. To this day I know if I need anything I can count on Walter and his team to deliver. Throughout this project I learned it was difficult to determine if companies, consultants, individuals, etc. where acting on their own behalf for the money only, or if they really cared if you are successful or not. Walter and his team care.
Thorough and very reasonably priced. Very good deliverables and professional in approach, innovative and practical implementation and training material that delivered. Recommend with confidence that Chef Services can do the job.
Chef Services is a wonderful group to work with. Any project we’ve had them do for us has been more like a partnership. They genuinely care about our success with the products/systems they have worked on. They are excellent communicators. Project expectations, timelines and costs are clearly laid out at the start. This has been a great alliance for us and we will continue to use Walter and his team in the future.
I’ve always relied on Chef Services Group for food product innovation and development. Walter’s unique combination of Culinary and Food Science credentials allows him to seamlessly transition from stove-top recipes to full-scale commercialization. His expertise includes frozen food, cook-chill soup, sauces, dressings, seafood, meat, and USDA-compliant value-added meals. Beyond creating winning products, he ensures smooth scale-up with complete, scalable formulations and clear assembly steps. Walter’s deep understanding of manufacturing and his ability to provide NLEA Nutrition Fact Labels make him an invaluable partner for any food development project.
