Can menu engineering ease profit pressures?

As the foodservice industry continues to evolve, operators are faced with many challenges, from inflation and rising energy costs to staffing shortages and changing customer expectations. The pressure is greater than ever for chefs to not only create exceptional dishes but also run a profitable and sustainable kitchen.

One of the most effective tools at a chef’s disposal isn’t a knife or a pan, its menu engineering. Although often a buzzword, menu engineering is essential to increase margins, reduce waste, and boost operational efficiency.

Menu engineering is the process of analysing, categorising, and optimising your menu based on two main variables: popularity and profitability. It’s about looking beyond what sells well to understand which items actually make money and which may be costing you.

By combining sales data, food cost analysis, and customer behaviour insights, chefs can refine their menus to emphasise high-margin dishes, streamline low performers and create a kitchen that is both more profitable and operationally efficient, with less food waste.

Rather than relying on guesswork, menu engineering provides a data-driven framework. Allowing you to make smart, confident decisions that protect margins without compromising creativity or customer satisfaction.

The menu engineering matrix

Every dish on your menu can be grouped into one of the four categories based on how often it’s ordered (popularity) and how much margin it makes (profitability). Understanding these categories helps you make informed decisions about what to keep, refine, or remove.

Stars (high profit, high popularity)
These are your dishes that customers frequently order and that generate profit, making them all-round winners. Stars often become signature menu items that customers keep coming back for. Highlight them prominently on your menu, promote them on social media, and ensure consistent quality to take advantage of them.

Plow horses (low profit, high popularity)
These are the dependable crowd-pleasers. They sell well but deliver lower profit margins due to higher ingredient costs and longer prep time. Removing them from your menu may risk disappointing customers, but there are ways to optimise them. Such as tweaking portion sizes, adjusting ingredients or finding alternative products to improve margin without affecting customer satisfaction.

Explore our own-brand product range, benchmarked against top brands and competitors for high-quality products at a significantly lower price.

Read our previous blog for more tips: How to increase the profitability of your menu.

Puzzles (high profit, low popularity)
These dishes bring in good margins but struggle to gain traction with customers. This is usually due to a lack of visibility, unappealing descriptions or poor menu placement. The key is to understand whether they’re worth saving and how. Consider improving their menu placement, rewriting descriptions to be more enticing or training front-of-house staff to recommend them confidently.

To support your teams, check out Caterer’s Campus our free E-learning platform with 30 modules including everything from profitability and menu planning to a social media masterclass and more.

Dogs (low profit, low popularity)
These are the underperforming dishes on your menu which don’t tend to sell and offer little financial return. They take up valuable space on the menu and can add complexity to your kitchen operations. Unless there’s a strategic reason to keep them such as catering to dietary requirements, consider removing or replacing them. Alternatively, rework the recipe or rethink its presentation and price point to reposition the dish into a more profitable category. 

How chefs can use menu engineering

1. Make data your secret ingredient
The MyRecipes & Menu Planning tool accessible through Bidfood Direct is perfect for menu engineering. It enables you to create recipes using live product data, including allergens, nutritional values and live pricing, ensuring accurate gross margins even as prices shift. With detailed cost reports, it highlights profitable dishes and those that need adjusting, helping you make confident and cost-effective decisions for your menu.

2. Streamline your menu
Consider how each dish affects your kitchen operations. Dishes which require lots of preparation that aren’t profitable slow down service and increase labour costs. Aim to streamline your menu with items that share ingredients and require similar preparation techniques. Focus on the more profitable dishes and replace underperforming dishes with options which increase margin.

3. Cross-utilise ingredients
Design recipes that use ingredients which can be utilised used over multiple dishes to reduce waste and prevent inventory from expiring. Why not use your tomato base sauce in pizzas, pasta, soup and premium dips. Cross-utilisation  streamlines ordering and prep, freeing up time and space in your kitchen while maintaining variety on your menu and minimising your environmental footprint.

4. Seasonality
Rotating your menu with the seasons keeps it fresh and exciting for customers while taking advantage of in-season, more cost-effective ingredients. It also allows you to trial new high-margin dishes and retire underperformers. Our fresh produce brand, Oliver Kay shares the latest availability, trends, new products and recipe inspiration for seasonal menu planning.

5. Balance margin with customer experience
Effective menu engineering strikes the perfect balance between cost control and customer psychology. By elevating dish descriptions, refining presentation, showcasing your sustainability initiatives, using price psychology (like £9.95 instead of £10) and training your team to confidently recommend key menu items, you can guide customers toward high-margin choices and add value to the overall dining experience.

Read more in our previous blog: Battling the budget: adding value into your pub menu

Final thoughts
So, is menu engineering the key to easing profit pressures? Absolutely. With the right tools and mindset, it’s a powerful way to futureproof your kitchen and boost long-term success.
Menu engineering isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about making smarter, more strategic menu choices. By focusing on what sells and what works operationally, you can protect margins, minimise waste and create dishes that perform.

For more support, Bidfood’s Unlock Your Menu campaign is designed to support chefs like yourself to gain control over these industry pressures. Unlock your menu’s full potential with practical tools, expert advice, and proven strategies. Covering everything from food waste reduction and energy efficiency to navigating inflation and improving profitability.