Menu reports
Which dishes sell, which make money, and the four-way classification that says what to do about each one.
Restaurant → Analytics → Menu
The figures
| Figure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dishes sold | How many distinct dishes sold, of how many on the menu and how many on sale. |
| Best seller | By units this period. |
| Gross margin | What you kept. It states how many dishes have a cost recorded, so a partial figure is never mistaken for a complete one. |
| Food cost | As a share of sales, on costed dishes. |
Menu engineering
The plot puts every dish on two axes — units sold against margin per unit — and classifies it against your own averages. Four outcomes, and each has a different answer:
| Class | Sells | Margin | Do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Star | Well | Good | Protect it. Keep it visible, keep the quality, do not quietly shrink the portion. |
| Plough-horse | Well | Thin | Raise the price a little, or reduce the cost. Small changes here move real money because the volume is already there. |
| Puzzle | Poorly | Good | Sell it harder — better description, better photograph, an upsell rule, a place higher on the menu. |
| Dog | Poorly | Thin | Remove it. It occupies menu space, prep time and stock for nothing. |
The classification is relative to your own menu, not an absolute standard. So every menu has stars and dogs, and the exercise is comparative by design.
The other charts
| Chart | Answers |
|---|---|
| Top sellers | Ranked by units. |
| Category share | Units by category — whether your menu is balanced or carried by one section. |
| Units over time | Dishes leaving the kitchen per period. |
| Margin leaders | Ranked by total margin earned, not margin per dish. A cheap dish sold constantly can beat an expensive one sold rarely. |
| Slow movers | Dishes on sale and barely selling. Drawn from available dishes only, because an off-sale dish selling nothing is not a problem. |
| Units by channel | Who the kitchen is cooking for — website, kiosk, till. |
The dish table
Per dish: units, revenue, cost, food cost %, margin, class, share of sales, when it last sold, and whether it is on sale. Each row opens that dish's own analytics.
Last sold is the quiet one. A dish that has not sold in six weeks is a decision waiting to be made, and nothing else on the screen surfaces it.
When it doesn't work
Margin and class are blank for a dish
No cost recorded. Classification needs both axes.
The plot is empty
Too few costed dishes with sales to compare against. It needs a population to average.
Everything is classed a dog
Check the range. A short period on a quiet week gives almost every dish below-average units.
A dish sells well but is not a star
Its margin is below your menu average. That is a plough-horse, and it is the most profitable thing on this page to fix.