Increase profitability by understanding your bottom line.
Understanding the dollars and cents of your items is the foundation of creating a profit-generating menu. By partnering with our team of industry experts, we will help you analyze your menu items and develop menu engineering strategies geared toward increasing your profitability.
By utilizing Sysco Studio, this has never been so easy!
Every good menu begins with recipe costing and menu analysis.
Before designing a new menu, it is essential to understand the profitability of your menu items. By breaking down individual menu items and analyzing their performance, you can create a strategic menu that brings in more customers and increased profits.
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Use guest demand and gross profit to determine your menu mix.
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Determine item cost and price of recipes using your own analysis.
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Track menu item sales from month-to-month and look for trends and successes.
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Evaluate menu item profitability and explore what-if scenarios to determine potential profits.
Sysco Studio, our online menu and marketing tool, makes it easy to understand your costs, analyze your business, and make strategic decisions.
Increase profitability with menu engineering.
Menu engineering is one of those things you know you’ve got to do, but you just keep putting it on the back burner for another day.
Fortunately, it’s not nearly as hard as it sounds – there are key elements to the perfectly engineered menu. Without a properly engineered menu, you’re letting profits slide right through your fingertips.
The Star Chart
With the Star Chart, you can easily see the menu class of your items based on their popularity and profitability mix.
STARS sell well and they bring the highest gross profit margin.
PLOWHORSES sell well, but don’t do as well in profit margin.
PUZZLES don’t sell as well as you’d like, but when they do, the profit margin is above average.
DOGS are items that don’t produce for you at all, but are sometimes necessary to have on the menu.
Page Layout
Did you know that customers will spend only 109 seconds reading a menu? Engineer your menu layout to take advantage of every second!
Depending on the type of menu, the reader will view the page in a specific path as they scan the items.
Your goal is to place the highest gross profit category in the number one position on the menu.
Positioning
Call attention to high profit items by using these techniques:
POP BOXES
Use pop boxes to make your high profit items jump off the page. This effect can increase sales by an average of 18% when properly used.
ICONS
Use an icon to call attention to your high-profit items, which you may denote as “House Specialties,” “Local Favorites,” “Family Recipe,” etc.
ITEM POSITIONING
There is a predictable pattern in which the reader’s eye will read a categorical list of foods. The First, Second and Last positions in a category list are the prime real estate (see circled items on the right). They are the most memorable to the reader and are more often purchased. Items buried in the center of a category tend to be overlooked. Place your lower profit or labor intensive items there.
