Menu engineering is a powerful method for analyzing the relative sales performance of the various products on your menu(s). This system compares the relative profitability and relative popularity of each item, and grades each item into one of four rankings: star, puzzle, plough horse, or dog.
'Stars' are products which return a high profit and are popular with your customers. 'Puzzles' are profitable items which aren't particularly popular. 'Plough Horses' are items which are popular (high sales) but not particularly profitable. 'Dogs' are items which do not make much profit and aren't popular with your customers.
Resort Restaurant's menu engineering facilities lets you set up menus quickly and easily and analyze the projected (budget) sales performance for a new menu before the menu is implemented. After implementing a new menu, you can analyze the actual sales performance of each item on your menu(s).
Menu engineering also lets you get a better 'feel' for what effect ingredient price fluctuations will have on the performance of your menu items. Just keep your ingredient costs up to date and review your menu engineering results regularly to see the effect of ingredient price changes on the profitability and popularity of individual menu items.
The program's graphical representation of menu engineering figures makes reviewing menu engineering a snap. The following screen shot shows the Engineering (Graph) page of the Menu Form, and highlights the fact that menu engineering details are shown in both graphical and tabular forms to make it easier to understand the menu's performance at a glance.
For more detailed information on menu engineering, please see the following topics.
•How can I make Menu Engineering work for me?
•How do I interpret a menu engineering graph?