Profitable Menu Engineering: Highlighting High-Margin Dishes

Written by Justine Nightingale
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at 08:00am CST

Menu engineering is part psychology, part analytics, and part common sense. The purpose of this marketing strategy is to increase your restaurant’s profits through the way you design your menu.

The strategy involves identifying and highlighting your most profitable dishes to encourage diners to order those instead of your other dishes. You want to draw diners’ attention to your most profitable items.

What’s more, studies show that restaurants who use menu engineering generally see up to a 35% increase in their profits.

In this article, we look at profitable menu engineering for your restaurant and how highlighting high-margin dishes can improve your bottom line.

The Psychology of Eye Movement

Just like you read a book from left to right, and you drive on the right side of the road, there are similar patterns people have when looking at a page like your menu.

If you know these patterns, you are better able to place your high-profit items in high-traffic areas on your menu. For example, you may place high-margin dishes or even specials right where your customers’ eyes will land.

• On a one panel menu, the best place is right at the top. The worst is at the very bottom.
• For a two panel menu, the best place is on the right hand panel at the top. The worst is on the left panel at the bottom.
• On a three panel menu, the worst is on the left panel at the bottom, while the best is on the far right panel at the top.
• For four or more panels, the best places are at the top of each panel, and the worst are at the bottom.

You can also use the golden triangle to decide where to place your high-margin items. This triangle says that diners first look at the center of the page and move their attention in a triangle. (tweet this) So, they look at the top center and move to the top right and then to the top left.

The Paradox of Choice

This concept is borrowed from psychology. When it comes to your menu, it means that when your customers are given too many choices, they will make poor decisions.

This means you may want to limit the number of options you offer to diners. For example, have separate menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so you don’t overwhelm your guests.

Then, you can take a look at each menu and pare them down to less than 10 choices. You may even find these are all high margin dishes, too.

The Menu Money-Maker

When deciding which dishes have a high margin, you need to identify them through their food costs.

To begin, start with menu costing. Make a list of all of your dishes and calculate the cost to make each dish. Next, rank them in order of popularity.

Now that you know the cost and popularity of each dish, you can decide which ones have a high margin and are worth putting in prime locations on your menu.

To help you do this, you can also categorize your dishes into the following:

• Stars – high profit and high sales
• Opportunities – lower profit but high sales
• Puzzles – high profit and low sales
• Dogs – low profit and low sales (get rid of these!)

Do your research, so you know what to keep and what to get rid of. Consider asking customers about your puzzle dishes. For the opportunities, look for ways to lower the food cost since they are popular.

Set a Time Frame

Once you’ve decided to re-engineer your menu, there are a few more things to think about.

You want to set a time period to evaluate the new menu to see if it’s working. It’s always a good idea to review your menu every season or every quarter, so this may be a natural timeline for you.

It’s also important to review pricing as food costs fluctuate.

Train Your Staff

Menu engineering doesn’t stop with your new menu.

You want to train your staff about which dishes to promote. Your restaurant servers have an enormous influence on their guests.

They interact with your diners in an intimate way, and they are uniquely poised to point out the high-margin dishes on your new menu. Consider them your menu guides.

Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Profitable menu engineering is also more than highlighting your high-margin dishes. It’s knowing your customers and catering to their needs. (tweet this)

In turn, this improves their overall customer experience and brings them back many times each month.

When you analyze the popularity of your dishes, you learn what your customers prefer. If these aren’t the most profitable items, do some legwork and see how you can reduce costs so they are more profitable.

You’ll engender customer loyalty while also increasing your profits.

Final Thoughts on Profitable Menu Engineering

One online source says that many diners spend about three minutes studying a menu before they decide what to order. In that short time, they scan your menu, skim the descriptions, and check the prices.

So, with that short time in mind, you want to make sure your high-margin dishes are placed where they can easily be noticed.

Finally, menu engineering involves some creativity, psychological insight, and analytics. With the tools here, you are well-equipped to highlight your high-margin dishes and create the best dining experience for your customers.

Is your website ready to host your online menu? At Restaurant Engine, we can create a website for you that showcases your online menu and sets it apart from the competition. Your website is the centerpiece of your online marketing, and it needs to look and perform well, too. You can count on us to create an amazing website that presents a unified brand for your restaurant and works across all digital platforms. Let us help you make the perfect site that draws customers in, improves customer engagement and your conversion rate, and enables you to grow your new business using website data!  

Are you ready to take your restaurant to the next level with a new website?

Get your free website consultation today!

Images: Amanda Vick and Nicolas Thomas on Unsplash

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