80% of restaurants don’t cost their menu - Tips from a menu engineer

A few months ago, we highlighted a few things about restaurant menus and what they do to try and draw you to particular dishes on the menu. Far be it from us to call ourselves experts, we’ve come across an even more in-depth article on menucoverdepot.com with extensive tips from menu engineer Gregg Rapp which highlights the mechanics behind engineering your menu.

5% who cost menu, do so incorrectly

We were pretty surprised to read that around 80% of restaurants don’t cost their menu, and that 5% that do, do so incorrectly.
It’s a time-consuming thing to do, but measure against the profits and the time which your menu is going to be in use, and it’s an essential thing to do.

Splitting your menu

We touched on categorising items and placing borders round high value items, but this article really drills down into page placement and splits your menu into four different sections.
We quite like the names they’ve used for the sections (although we reckon dogs are pretty popular!).
• Stars—high profitability and high popularity
• Plow-horses—low profitability and high popularity
• Puzzles—high profitability and low popularity
• Dogs—low profitability and low popularity
How many of the techniques in the article to you consciously follow when putting together your latest menu? Why not try and revamp your current menu, see if you notice a difference?