Menu Engineering and Profitability Checklist

Pull a 90-day item-level sales report from Toast, Square, Aloha, or whatever POS the location runs. Need three columns at minimum: item name, units sold, and net sales. Strip comps and voids before the analysis — they distort mix percentages for high-velocity items.

Tag every item as Star (high popularity, high margin), Plowhorse (high popularity, low margin), Puzzle (low popularity, high margin), or Dog (low popularity, low margin). The matrix is what drives every decision in the rest of this template — get the tagging right before anything else.

Items below a 5–10% category mix are candidates for the cut list unless they serve a strategic purpose (price anchor, dietary option, signature dish). Don't auto-86 the lowest sellers — check whether they're the only vegetarian or gluten-free option on the section before recommending removal.

Pull the last full invoice cycle from Sysco, US Foods, PFG, or Restaurant Depot and refresh ingredient costs in MarginEdge, R365, or your costing sheet. Stale recipe cards (more than 90 days old) are the single biggest source of contribution-margin error in this exercise.

Plate cost = sum of ingredient costs at recipe yield. Contribution margin = menu price minus plate cost (not minus food-cost percentage — dollars per cover is what pays the rent). Capture each item's CM in the summary below so the design and pricing phases have a single source of truth.

Dogs with no strategic role come off the menu. Puzzles get a redesign or a reposition before they're cut. Removing items has knock-on effects — discontinue-notices to distributors, prep-list edits, POS button rebuilds — so commit deliberately before triggering the downstream work.

Guest eye-path on a two-page menu lands first at top-right, then top-left, then center — the golden triangle. Move Stars (and high-CM Puzzles you're trying to promote) into those spots. Don't waste prime real estate on Plowhorses that sell themselves.

Cornell research on menu psychology consistently shows that removing the dollar sign and the trailing decimals ("24" vs "$24.00") reduces price salience and lifts check averages. Align prices with the end of the description rather than right-justifying them in a column — column alignment encourages guests to shop by price.

Each menu item ties up walk-in space, prep labor, and ticket time. The rule of thumb is roughly 7 items per category — beyond that, kitchen speed degrades and inventory variance climbs. Confirm the count with the chef before locking the layout.

Target food cost for full-service typically sits between 28–32%; bar program 18–22%; pizza/pasta concepts can run 25–28%. Use the target as a floor check, not a ceiling — a Star with 35% food cost and an $18 contribution margin still beats a Puzzle with 22% food cost and a $4 CM.

Plowhorses are popular enough to absorb a $1–$2 price bump without losing meaningful mix. Move in increments — a 4–6% lift on the top three Plowhorses often delivers more bottom-line than any other lever in this template. Watch guest sentiment for two weeks post-launch before the next bump.

Charm endings (.95, .99) read fast-casual or value-driven. Round endings (.00, whole numbers) read upscale or chef-driven. Pick one convention and apply across the whole menu — mixed endings look like a costing error.

Download the trailing 30 days of invoices from Sysco, US Foods, PFG, or your specialty distributors. MarginEdge and R365 ingest these automatically; if you're on paper invoices, pull the binder from receiving and scan the top SKUs by spend.

Flag any ingredient where the unit cost has moved more than 10% in the trailing 30 days — proteins (beef tenderloin, salmon), eggs, dairy, avocado, and shellfish are the usual suspects. Volatile inputs in high-CM Stars are where contract pricing pays off fastest.

Bring the volatile-SKU list to the rep and ask for a 90- or 120-day price hold. Reps will usually trade a fixed price for volume commitment on the affected items. Get it in writing — verbal price holds disappear when the rep's territory changes.

Send the final design file to the printer and push button-builds to Toast or Square at the same time — POS and print drifting out of sync is a recurring source of comps and guest friction. Confirm the new prices ring correctly with a test ticket before any guest sees the new menu.

Email the rep at each affected distributor with the list of SKUs to stop dropping. Update the par sheet and the prep list the same day — line cooks still produce mise for cut items if the prep sheet isn't updated, and the waste lands in next month's food cost variance.

Run a sit-down tasting with servers and bartenders on the new Stars — they can't sell what they haven't tasted. Give each server a two-line description and a guided suggestion ("if the table orders the burger, the bourbon-glazed wings pair with it"). Tie it to the upsell talking points without pushy scripting.

Post the new menu to Google Business Profile, Yelp, Resy or OpenTable, and Instagram on launch day. Send an email blast to the loyalty list highlighting two Stars with photos. Schedule the 30-day post-launch review on the GM calendar before signing off.