MKT, New Delhi
Four kitchens and a bar under one roof, planned as one business.
Read →Expertise/F&B and Restaurants /The Menu Engineering Playbook
THE F&B PRACTICE · A WORKING TOOL
Menu Engineering
Every menu is a portfolio. Every dish is a position. This is how the kitchen's poetry meets the owner's arithmetic — and how anyone can learn to read a menu the way an asset manager reads a P&L.
EXCELSIOR
I · THE IDEA
Engineer in rupees, not percentages.
The same conviction that prices our wine prices our menu: the house banks contribution — absolute money per cover — not cost ratios. A 22% food cost on a dish that contributes ₹120 is worse business than a 45% food cost that contributes ₹900.
Menu engineering asks two questions of every dish, over a real trading period:
QUESTION ONE
Do guests choose it?
Popularity — its share of covers against a fair share of the menu.
QUESTION TWO
Does it pay?
Contribution — selling price minus true plate cost, in absolute money.
Two answers, four fates: the Star (chosen and paying), the Plowhorse (chosen, thin), the Puzzle (paying, ignored) and the Dog (neither). The craft is not the label — it is what you do next, and the tool below teaches that too.
III · THE PLAYBOOK
Four fates, four moves
CHOSEN · PAYING
The Star
Protect it. Never cheapen the plate, hold the recipe sacred, keep it visible — top-right of the page, first words from the server. Test gentle price rises; a Star carries them.
CHOSEN · THIN
The Plowhorse
The room loves it; the till doesn't. Re-engineer the plate cost quietly, pair it with a high-margin side, nudge the price in small steps — never break the loyalty that makes it popular.
IGNORED · PAYING
The Puzzle
Profitable and unloved — a selling problem, not a cooking one. Rename it, re-describe it, move it to the sight-line, let servers taste it and talk about it. If it still won't move, it wasn't a puzzle — it was a dog in good clothes.
IGNORED · THIN
The Dog
Retire it with grace — unless it exists for a reason the matrix can't see: the chairman's favourite, the children's plate, the dish one loyal table books for. Sentiment is allowed; unexamined sentiment is not.
IV · THE PRACTICE
A monthly rite, not a rescue.
Run the bench every month, after the sales mix closes. The matrix is a habit — like the stocktake, like the P&L review. Menus drift; the discipline is noticing.
01
Close the sales mix
— one honest month from the POS, dish by dish
02
Cost the plate truly
— recipe cost as served — garnish, bread, the amuse included
03
Let the bench classify
— CM against the average; share against 70% of fair share
04
Make one move per dish
— from the playbook — never five changes at once
05
Change the menu, not the kitchen
— position, description and price move before recipes do
06
Wait a full cycle
— let a month of covers vote on the change
07
Re-run and compare
— the number that must rise is average CM per cover
“Business is a series of cash flows — and the menu is where they begin.”