What data do I need to run menu engineering?

For each menu item: Item name, selling price, portion cost from your Recipe Cost Card, and unit sales for a defined period (week or 4 weeks).

How are Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs defined?

Items are split by popularity (top 20% of unit sales by default) and by contribution margin relative to the group median. High pop + high CM = Star; high pop + low CM = Plowhorse; low pop + high CM = Puzzle; low pop + low CM = Dog.

Can I test price changes?

Yes. Use the workbook’s Price Sensitivity control (+$0.25/+$0.50/+$1.00) to see margin deltas per unit before changing the printed price.

Menu Engineering Matrix (Popularity vs Profit) — Free Calculator

Download Excel (.xlsx) Preview in Google Sheets Back to Calculators

Need the walkthrough? Read the guide.

Upstream tools: Recipe Cost Card · Yield / Trim / Cook Loss

How it works (30 seconds)

Paste Item, Price, and Portion Cost from your Recipe Cost Card.
Enter unit sales for the period (we use an 80/20 popularity flag).
We compute Contribution Margin (CM) and classify: Star (high pop, high CM), Plowhorse (high pop, low CM), Puzzle (low pop, high CM), Dog (low pop, low CM).

Quick item check (demo)

Price ($) Portion Cost ($)

Units Sold (period) Top % popularity flag (0–1)

Sensitivity: Price +$

Storyboard actions

Star Keep, feature, protect throughput
Plowhorse Raise price lightly or reduce portion/plate cost
Puzzle Re-plate, rename, or re-position; test promo
Dog De-feature or retire; consider limited-time

Pro tips

Run by daypart; PMIX skews can hide true Stars.
Audit high-cost SKUs with a quick yield test if CM looks off.
Bundle low-pop high-CM items with traffic drivers.

Definitions

Top % popularity flag (0–1) — this tells the sheet what you consider a “top seller.” A value of 0.20 means “treat the top 20% of items by unit sales as popular.” The workbook uses this to split items into high-pop vs low-pop before it assigns Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs.
Sensitivity: Price +$ — this is a test bump to your menu price, like +0.25 or +1.00. The sheet shows how much your contribution margin would change if you raised the price by that amount, so you can see the impact before you actually reprint the menu.

Preview (Read-only Google Sheet)

Download Excel (.xlsx)

Tip: host your master in Google Sheets for multi-store sharing; export a fresh XLSX for line-level updates monthly.

Menu Engineering Matrix — Popularity vs Profit

Preview (Read-only Google Sheet)

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