PrepSheet

Menu Profit Matrix (Menu Engineering)

Excel (.xlsx) — also opens in Google Sheets & Numbers

See which dishes make you money and which quietly lose it. List each dish, its sales, cost and price — it sorts your whole menu into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs and tells you what to do with each.

What's inside

  • Auto-classifies every dish by popularity × profit
  • Plain-English action for each: feature, re-cost, reprice or cut
  • Whole-menu revenue, food cost and gross profit totals
  • Built for cafes, restaurants and food trucks

What it does

Classic menu engineering without the consultancy invoice. List each dish with its sales count, food cost and menu price; the matrix auto-classifies every item by popularity × profit into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs, then gives a plain-English action for each: feature it, re-cost it, reprice it or cut it.

You also get whole-menu totals — revenue, food cost and gross profit — so the effect of any change is visible at menu level, not just dish level.

Who it's for

Cafés, restaurants and food trucks with an established menu and real sales data. This is the tool for the moment you suspect two dishes are quietly paying for the rest.

Goes well with

Try the numbers first, free: the food cost & GP calculator and the recipe costing tool run in your browser.