The Menu Matrix: Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs

Your menu has four stars and three dogs. Here's which is which — and the $15,000 a year hiding in the middle.

Menu engineering is the one thing the chains do every quarter and independents almost never do, because the spreadsheet is the hard part. This is the spreadsheet. Type each item's price, real food cost per plate, and last month's units. The workbook computes contribution per plate, your menu's own averages, and puts every item in a box: Stars (popular and profitable), Plowhorses (popular, thin), Puzzles (profitable, unloved), Dogs (neither) — with the textbook move written on the line.

The easy money. Plowhorses sell by the hundred and make too little each. The workbook prices a dollar on every one, subtracts the orders you would lose, and tells you what is left: $1,297 a month on the sample menu, $15,564 a year.

The dashboard grades it — food cost against target, what the stars carry, average contribution per plate, dogs and plowhorses and puzzles as a share of the menu, the plowhorse dollar, the length of the menu — HEALTHY, WATCH or ALERT, with a bar chart of every item's contribution. One portrait page, before the next print.

Built for

Diners and cafés · pizzerias and taquerias · bars with kitchens · food trucks · bakeries with a case · anyone who prints a menu.

What you get

One .xlsx file, five tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ins, no subscription. A realistic 16-item diner menu is loaded so you see every box before you type over it.