MKT, New Delhi
Four kitchens and a bar under one roof, planned as one business.
Read →Knowledge · F&B
Menu engineering.
How to cost a plate, set its price, and decide which dishes to protect, reprice, promote or remove. Two calculators.
Cost the plate
Start with what the ingredient costs after trimming. Salmon bought at 2,200 a kilo with a yield of 78 percent costs 2,821 a kilo on the plate.
Add every ingredient in the recipe, then an allowance for what is not costed line by line: oil, seasoning, garnish, bread. We use 8 percent.
Edible-portion cost = purchase price ÷ yield. Plate cost = sum of (quantity × edible-portion cost) × (1 + allowance).
Set the price
Two methods pull in different directions. The factor method divides plate cost by a target food-cost percentage, and overprices expensive ingredients. The contribution method adds a fixed margin to plate cost, and underprices them.
Our guide price is the average of the two, rounded up to the next 50 and ended in 45 or 95. It is a starting point. The menu matrix decides.
House ruleJudge a dish on the money it leaves, not on its food-cost percentage. Lamb chops at 42 percent food cost can leave 1,271 a plate. Butter chicken at 21 percent leaves 745.
Plate cost and guide price
From purchase price and yield to the cost of the plate and a price to test.
Result · example figures until you change them
Edible-portion cost per kg—
Main ingredient on the plate—
Plate cost—
Price by food-cost target—
Price by margin target—
Food cost at guide price—
Guide price—
Classify the dishes
Take one category at a time. Two lines divide it (Kasavana and Smith). The popularity line is 70 percent of an even share: with eight mains, a dish is popular if it takes more than 8.75 percent of sales. The profitability line is the average margin per dish sold.
| Class | Popular? | Margin | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Star | Yes | Above the line | Protect it. Keep the quality and the position. Never discount it. |
| Plowhorse | Yes | Below the line | Raise the price in small steps, or take cost out of the recipe. |
| Puzzle | No | Above the line | Promote it. Lead the section with it. Offer a smaller portion. |
| Dog | No | Below the line | Remove it, or rebuild it. |
The menu matrix
Enter one category at a time: all the mains, or all the starters. Change any figure and the dishes sort themselves into four classes.
| Dish | Sold | Price | Plate cost | Margin | Food cost | Share of sales | Total margin | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — | ||||
| — | — | — | — | — |
Result · example dishes until you change them
Popularity line (70% of an even share)—
Profitability line (average margin per dish sold)—
Stars · Plowhorses · Puzzles · Dogs—
Total margin—
Reprice with a test
When you raise a price, some sales are lost. Until the outlet has its own history, assume that a 10 percent rise loses 8 percent of that dish’s sales in premium dining. Make the change only where total margin rises, and watch the mix for eight weeks.
New sales = sales × (1 − 0.8 × price rise %).
Design the menu
There is no sweet spot on the page. Eye-tracking shows that guests read a menu like a book, from the top left (Yang). Lead each section with the dish you most want sold.
Keep each section to five to seven dishes. Use one box at most. Prices without currency signs or dotted lines are a sound habit, though the evidence that they raise spending is weak.