Sample result
Menu Engineering Architect for Restaurants
The owner asked this:«Here are my 34 references with units and costs for the last 8 weeks. Put every dish in its quadrant and tell me what to do with each one.»
① The matrix, with margin read in money
Extract of the master table, sorted by period margin. Figures in COP, 8 weeks normalized to a month.
| Dish | Category | Units | Price | Cost | Unit margin | Period margin | Quadrant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House platter | Mains | 620 | 72,000 | 27,400 | 44,600 | 27,652,000 | Star |
| Three-meat sancocho | Soups | 480 | 60,000 | 21,600 | 38,400 | 18,432,000 | Star |
| Ajiaco | Soups | 355 | 50,000 | 16,500 | 33,500 | 11,892,500 | Star |
| Garlic trout | Fish | 210 | 66,000 | 21,100 | 44,900 | 9,429,000 | Star |
| Charcoal tenderloin | Mains | 155 | 62,000 | 21,100 | 40,900 | 6,339,500 | Star (clears the threshold by 1 unit) |
| Posta negra | Mains | 140 | 54,000 | 16,200 | 37,800 | 5,292,000 | Puzzle |
| Grandmother's dessert | Desserts | 240 | 28,000 | 7,000 | 21,000 | 5,040,000 | Plowhorse |
| House rice | Mains | 190 | 46,000 | 21,200 | 24,800 | 4,712,000 | Plowhorse |
| House stuffed breast | Mains | 130 | 44,000 | 13,600 | 30,400 | 3,952,000 | Puzzle |
| Picada board for two | Starters | 22 | 68,000 | 29,900 | 38,100 | 838,200 | Puzzle |
| Rib broth | Soups | 95 | 28,000 | 8,400 | 19,600 | 1,862,000 | Dog |
Popularity thresholds used (70% of each category's average sales): mains 154 u · soups 139 u · desserts 109 u · fish 78 u · starters 52 u. Menu median unit margin: 25,800 COP.
The full menu splits like this: 7 stars · 11 plowhorses · 9 puzzles · 7 dogs. No reference was left out.
A note on the costings: the house's last costing is 7 months old. That is past 90 days, so all four quadrants are read with a reservation, and it is said out loud: every margin above is a hypothesis until a portion gets weighed in service.
② Executive read: the three findings that move the most money
1 · Five references make 52% of the margin. Platter, sancocho, ajiaco, trout and tenderloin leave 73,745,000 COP of the 141,234,000 the menu produces per month. That is a strength and a dependency: if beef rises 10% and it is half the platter's cost, that dish alone costs you 849,400 COP a month with nobody noticing.
2 · The tail charges rent. 12 references sell under 40 units a month and contribute 9,213,300 COP: 6.5% of the margin on 35% of the menu. They do not all come off at once: 5 of those 12 have unit margins above the median and deserve a visibility trial before removal. The other 7 are dogs, and the hole they leave also costs, so they come off with a replacement, not on their own.
3 · House rice is the most expensive plowhorse you own. 190 units a month at 24,800 COP of margin, in the same section where the platter leaves 44,600. Every rice that goes out instead of a platter is 19,800 COP that did not come in. You do not raise its price: you check its gram weights against the spec sheet and take away its top slot in the section. Raising prices on your five best sellers with no prior test moves the mix before it moves the margin.
And here the matrix flags its own limit. With thresholds computed per category, «to share» produces three stars selling 14, 12 and 9 units a month, and «from the stove» produces two more at 38 and 24. These are categories of 3 and 4 references: the threshold is computed against themselves, which is why they all pass. When a category has fewer than 5 references, its average tells you nothing. Those five were reclassified against the whole menu's median units (112 u/month) and fell to puzzle or dog, which is where they were. The data is in the table; the criterion is written here.
The full example has 1 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.