The best place to start is with a Menu Matrix.

A Menu Matrix gives you a clear, objective look at what’s working, what’s underperforming, and where your real profit opportunities live. To build one correctly, you’ll want a PMIX report covering the last six months—or at minimum, the entire lifespan of your current menu.

This data shows:

• What guests actually order

• What items drive profit

• What items take up space but don’t earn their keep

If you’re opening a new restaurant or launching a brand-new menu, the process is slightly different—but just as important. In that case, you start with a curated list of items you want to offer, then allow a professional menu design-engineering firm to help construct the menu before it ever hits the tables.

This approach allows the menu to be engineered out of the gate, with positioning, pricing, and flow working together from day one—rather than fixing problems months later.

Strategic Pricing Matters

Pricing is not just math—it’s psychology.

Appetizers, for example, should be priced:

• High enough to generate a healthy margin

• Low enough to encourage ordering

These items are incremental sales. They don’t need to do the heavy lifting for profitability—but they should absolutely contribute meaningful profit.

When it comes to price increases, resist the urge to make big jumps too quickly. Instead, plan small, intentional adjustments once or twice per year to keep pace with food costs while maintaining guest trust.

At HotOperator, we encourage this disciplined approach—and even include up to two pricing adjustments per year for our clients (with some restrictions), because consistency always beats reactionary pricing.

Use Mental Anchors When Making Larger Moves

If a larger menu price adjustment is necessary, mental anchor points become essential.

Anchors help guests understand that what they’re paying is reasonable in comparison—not just in isolation. When done correctly, guests don’t feel sticker shock; they feel informed.

Design Signals Value

Finally, your menu design must support what you charge.

Typography, spacing, layout, highlights, and brand alignment all communicate quality. A well-designed menu prepares the guest to accept—and appreciate—a higher perceived value before the food ever arrives.

And if you offer a rewards or loyalty program, make signing up effortless. A simple QR code on the menu allows guests to join while they’re waiting—turning idle time into long-term engagement.

A great menu isn’t just a list of food.
It’s one of the most powerful profit tools in your restaurant.

Let HotOprator® take this burden off your plate. For a free consultation, reach out here. And remember, every new HotOperator menu comes with up to two menu updates per year, free!

The post Getting Your Restaurant Menu Ready for an Update: Start With the Data appeared first on HotOperator.

How to Engineer a Pizza Restaurant Menu That Boosts Profits (Without Alienating Guests)

When Restaurant Menu Engineering for Pizza Restaurants, many Pizza restaurants play by a different set of rules when it comes to menu engineering. While the product is universally loved and often shared, that very strength can also skew your profitability picture—if you’re not careful. Whether you’re using menu boards or hand-held menus, understanding how to structure your offerings can lead to significantly higher check averages and better overall performance.

Here’s how to engineer your pizza menu for profit, from product mix and pricing to positioning strategies that gently nudge customers toward more profitable choices.

Pizza is a Shared Meal—So Share the Profits

Pizza is usually ordered by a group and shared, which means the profit per pizza isn’t the whole story. If you don’t divide your profits by the number of people sharing a pizza, it will look far more profitable than it actually is—especially when compared to single-portion items like pasta, wings, or salads.

And keep this in mind: once pizza hits the table, everything else tends to fade into the background. That makes it essential to design your menu to encourage appetizers, sides, and add-ons before the pizza order lands.

Start With a Product Mix Report (PMIX)

Many operators confuse food purchases with sales. But to truly understand your business, you need a product mix reportthat tells you what’s selling—finished plates, not ingredients.

• With POS: Use 1–3 months of sales data.

• Without POS: Manually count tickets over 1–3 weeks.

You’ll quickly see what’s moving and what’s not.

Know Your Real Food Cost

Don’t just track bulk ingredient costs. Focus on finished goods cost—what it costs you to put a pizza, pasta, or appetizer in front of the guest. Then compare that to the selling price to calculate your real profit picture.

Here’s the trick: Look for items with above-average popularity and above-average profit dollars, not just good food cost percentages.

And remember—adjust pizza profits based on average party size to get a true per-person value.

PHAN Your Menu for Maximum Impact

Use this four-step strategy:

1. Positioning

Put the pizza where it’s easy to find—but not first. Like milk in a grocery store, people came for pizza, so make them browse past wings, apps, and salads first. This increases the odds they’ll order something extra.

2. Highlighting

Draw attention to a few high-profit pastas or appetizers. Use a light background with dark text to highlight—much more effective than neon or bright highlighter colors.

3. Anchoring

Mental anchoring makes expensive items look more reasonable.
Example: Create a $300 Pizza Party Package for 8–10 people (drinks, apps, dessert). That way, your $25 Ultra Deluxe Pizza looks modest by comparison.

💡 Pro Tip: If you only implement one change—do the anchoring. It’s often the highest ROI change you can make.

4. Numbers

Avoid falling into the pricing trap. A rigid price list encourages guests to compare by cost alone. Tuck prices into descriptions and don’t be afraid to push the envelope. A little pushback is better than leaving money on the table.

Final Thoughts

Pizza may be your star attraction—but your menu design can turn a good pizza joint into a great business. With the right mix of data, pricing, psychology, and layout strategy, you can increase check averages and guest satisfaction all at once. Reach out here to make a connection.

The post Restaurant Menu Engineering for Pizza Restaurants appeared first on HotOperator.

According to The National Restaurant Association, the foodservice industry is on target to reach $1 Trillion dollars in sales this year. And when asked what stands out in the industry, here’s what they had to say (and what HotOperator recommends for taking advantage of those trends).

But before we get to that. Keep in mind, a strong message became clear: People want human contact when dinning out. You know, people helping people. So, take note before you try to tighten staff with computers.

The Key findings:   

1. Sales are up: The foodservice industry is forecast to reach $1 trillion in sales in 2024.

Is this sales in more people going out to eat? Nope. It’s mostly higher prices. To offset this, make sure you are mental anchoring your restaurant menu. Have comparative prices that show the guest just how little they are spending.

2. Restaurants are hiring: The industry workforce is projected to grow by 200,000 jobs, for total industry employment of 15.7M by the end of 2024. 45% of operators need more employees to meet customer demand.

Which is great. But it also offers another problem. Many operators are struggling to find workers (and keep them). A strong brand marketing campaign will help your restaurant stay top-of-mind. And that makes your restaurant more attractive to employees along with consumers.

3. Competition is strong: In 2024, 45% of operators expect competition to be more intense than last year.

This is difficult for most independent operators. Chain restaurants are taking a larger and larger portion of the market. To combat this, independent operators will need to use guerrilla marketing programs to stay in front of chains moving into their market. Try things like local bonuses. Special menu items that only local guests know about. And treat guests like royalty. 

4. Costs are up: 98% of operators say higher labor costs are an issue for their restaurant. 97% cite higher food costs. 38% say their restaurants were not profitable last year.

This points to a lack of marketing which puts stress on any restaurant. Simply put, a weak brand will not push their value up in the eyes of local guests. Our recommendation? Do a brand analysis along with a menu matrix to find out what your guests really think of your business. Every day you have a focus group going on in your restaurant. People are voting for your business with their pocket books and their feet. They are telling you if they like your business, and they are telling you what they like most about dinning with you (and what they don’t like)

But don’t do this on your own. You need an objective view. You need an expert to look at your business and offer advice. It might be painful, but it is necessary.

5. Consumers are value conscious: Nearly half of consumers are taking a wait-and-see stance when it comes to spending. Operators who offer a solid value proposition for dining out can nudge customers out of their holding pattern.

This is not a deep thinking thing to say. That’s because consumers are always value conscious. Where most people make a mistake is thinking that value conscious is all about price. But it’s not just about price. It’s about price and function together. A product can have a higher price only if you offer reasons that will support that higher price. Most operators get this wrong in their business and never think to support each item with the proper description and highlight.

6. Consumers love restaurants: 9 in 10 adults say they enjoy going to restaurants. Restaurants allow them to enjoy a favorite meal that has flavor and taste sensations they can’t easily replicate at home.

So it’s not all bad news. Of course people want to eat out. It’s fun. In fact, it’s a mini vacation. So, you need to nurture those feelings with your guests. That means you have to train your staff on how to work with guests so they make better choices when they order from you. And how to get your servers to leave their own struggles at the door when they come to work.

If you’re looking for help to build a better brand in your restaurant, give Mark a call. He’s an expert in restaurant branding, menu development, social media and content development. He’s been doing this stuff for nearly 4 decades, and has worked with more than 200 restaurants across the country. This gives him a unique ability to learn from other independent operators what’s working and what isn’t.

Hey, the first 15 minutes are free. To take advantage, call 800-316-3198 and leave a message. Mark will get back to you.

The post 6 Restaurant Trends and What They Mean (number 4 is essential) appeared first on HotOperator.

Biaggi’s staff was skeptical when they gave HotOperator a call and asked us to work on Biaggi’s restaurant menu design. They had heard and thought about menu engineering and menu design. But had always designed the menu themselves. Needless to say, they had reservations about using an outside resource. The only person in the company who wanted to hear what I had to say was the former president and CEO of Biaggi’s, John McDonnell.

We informed them it’s important to know what a well-engineered menu can do for a restaurant. A great menu can increase the plate contribution in your restaurant. That means it can increase the overall amount of money your restaurant generates in dollars to the bank. It can also smooth out the throughput in your operation. That means you can place a focus on the items that move through the kitchen and out the door more often. A good menu can also enhance the way consumers feel about the food they’re about to order. It can also change how much they like your food when they get it.  Plus, a great menu can reduce the number of complaints get.

What a restaurant menu design can’t do.

As much as it’s important to keep in mind what a menu can do, it’s also important to remember what it can’t. No matter how well-engineered a menu is, it cannot keep up with fluctuating food costs. It isn’t great at increasing the foot traffic into your restaurant. Plus, it can’t outsell a server.

I know this firsthand because one of the restaurant operators I worked with in the Chicago area had just that problem. When anyone tried to order an item that we had highlighted, the servers would talk them out of it. I know this for a fact because I traveled to Chicago to find out why the highlights were not working as well as they should have. When I tried to order one of the items in question, the server frowned and said, “You don’t want that.”

Having said that, a great menu can do a lot to help your restaurant bring in its highest return on investment.

You’re Entitled to a Profit

We tell clients they are entitled to a profit. You’d be surprised how many restaurant operators need to hear that. The things that make a restaurant successful have always been essentially the same: Great location, good food, professional marketing, clean bathrooms, and good people. Oh yeah, and a great menu.

What’s with the Price List?

There are a lot of ways to make a menu into a price list. When we mention this to restaurant operators the picture they get is a product name and a bunch of dots that lead to a price. But there are a lot of clever ways to make a price list. In our decades of design-engineering menus, we’ve seen most of them. And there has never been a good price list.

Biaggi’s menu was a price list. When we pointed that out, we got a lot of blank stares. That’s because their menu had the prices all at the bottom of the menu descriptions, they thought their menu didn’t qualify as a price list.

Okay, so what is a Price List?

A price list is any menu design in which you place the prices all in a uniform place on the menu. That, and the menu makes prices easy to find and compare. I’ll say this again because it’s so important: don’t make a price list. Not ever!

A price list is any design that allows a consumer to compare prices on a menu.

Prices can be all lined up on one side. All pushed off from the item name. All lined up at the bottom of a paragraph. Or any bold typeface or color change. Or really, anything that calls attention to prices on a menu. You can see on this before image the prices are all at the product names rather than in the body copy.

So Why Is It Bad to Call Attention to Prices?

Because you’re not selling prices. A menu is selling food. When was the last time someone came into your restaurant and asked for a 17.99 with a side of 3.99? Imagine if people ordered the way. Most restaurant operators set up their menu to say: “Hey honey, how about you have this nice 18.99, I’ll have this 14.99 and we’ll share?”

Price lists are also bad because it makes it easy to compare prices. When you do, you will push your guests to order a lower-priced item. We know through experience that restaurant operators who use price lists have a lot more trouble making a profit.

The first step in correcting Biaggi’s menu was to get rid of the price list. We did this by tucking the prices into paragraphs without calling attention to them. When we did this, we made the menu about what’s good to eat rather than  what food costs.

Start with a Menu Matrix

A menu matrix is a scatter graph that puts each item on your menu into one of four categories. These include Stars, items with higher than average sales and profits; Puzzles, items with higher than average profits but slow sales; Plow Horses (sometimes called cash cows), items with above-average sales but below-average profits; and Dogs, which are items that are below average in both sales and profits.

We like to start with a matrix to help us better understand how the restaurant patron views the menu. Each day there is a focus group going on at your restaurant. People are deciding if they will eat at your restaurant, and they are deciding what looks good to them. The matrix breaks those decisions into a format that provides insights into what customers are thinking. If you’ve never had a Menu Matrix done for you, contact us here.

Menu Matrix For Biaggi’s

With Biaggi’s we developed three matrix reports. One for each tier of restaurant in their network. They have more than 20 locations and they are categorized based on the location, demographics and median income levels.  So we developed a matrix for lower-tier, mid-tier and higher-tier locations. That way we could look at how each price variation might affect consumer behavior.

When looking at a menu scatter graph, we keep the categories separate so each section of the menu is only being compared against other items in the same or similar category. In this way we’re able to look at appetizers, sandwiches, entrées and other like items to determine what’s working and what could be improved.

About Appetizers, Desserts and Sides

Most restaurant operators look at appetizers like any other item on the menu. This is a mistake. Appetizers, like desserts and sides, are incremental. In other words, they add on to the overall profits of the restaurant and don’t need to pay a share of the overhead or fixed costs in the operation.

Think of it this way: When a consumer goes into a restaurant, he or she will very likely purchase food. It’s why the consumer stopped in in the first place. So the only question that remains is what he or she will order. And what’s cool from where you’re sitting is that you can have a lot of influence on what the customer decides.

Now, you can bet the guest is going to have an entrée, salad or a sandwich of some kind. And, in fact, the entrée is the reason the customer came into your restaurant in the first place. But you don’t know if you will sell them an appetizer or dessert. And, in fact, less than 10 percent of the people who visit a restaurant actually do get an appetizer or dessert, on average. When customers order one of these items, the profit, or the leftover money after the food cost is subtracted, can go directly to the bank as long as the appetizer isn’t being substituted for an entrée.

Price Appetizers Correctly

I’ve discovered that many restaurant operators try to get the same amount of money from an appetizer as they do from an entrée or sandwich. And the mistake they’re making is, if they allowed for a higher food cost percentage on the appetizers by lowering the price, they would sell a lot more appetizers as add-on items and make a lot more money in the process.

With Biaggi’s, the first thing they noticed was they didn’t have any appetizers that showed up in the Star category. They were all either Dogs or Plow Horses. And it took a lot of explanation to get them to understand that appetizers are not supposed to be Star items. They don’t have enough plate contribution when compared to other items on the menu to compete as an entrée.

This is the same discussion we have with nearly every restaurant operator we work with. Appetizers are supposed to be before and in addition to a meal. So even if the appetizer has a 45 percent food cost, it’s still delivering an increase in the profits for the restaurant. And if you can keep the prices reasonable without dampening the quality of the finished product, you’re way better off.

Putting Pizza in Perspective

Nearly every Italian restaurant I’ve ever worked with thinks pizza is the most profitable thing they have in their restaurant. And if you look at a large pie at someplace north of $20, that would appear to be true. Most pizzas have a low food-cost percentage, usually less than 30 percent. So they do bring a pretty good buck, especially when compared to a chicken pasta dish that sells for someplace closer to $12.99 and has a 38 percent food cost. The way the restaurant looks at it, they’re taking $14 to the bank for every pizza they sell, compared to just over eight bucks for the pasta dish.

But let’s look at those profits another way. When a customer buys a pizza, they will most likely share it. And in most cases, a larger pizza is going to be shared by up to four people. But for the sake of argument, let’s settle on three. So the fourteen bucks they took to the bank was really only about half as much money as the pasta was able to pull in.

In the case of Biaggi’s, their focus was already on entrées including pasta, seafood and steaks, which made them a much more profitable Italian restaurant than most of the other Italian restaurants we’ve worked with in the past. And the scatter graph supported their focus, reporting 76 percent of their sales coming from a combination of pasta and other entrées.

Why Chefs Don’t Like Highlights

The closest I ever got to a satisfying answer to the question of why restaurant chefs don’t like using highlights on their menu was the one I got from Biaggi’s fouder Todd Hovenden: “I just don’t like ‘em.” And if you don’t like them either, that’s fine, but perhaps I can change your mind about using them anyway.

A highlight is a visual device we use on menus to call attention to items that offer a higher plate contribution in the hopes that they will increase in popularity. HotOperator.com research shows that the best way to highlight an item on a menu is through color, where the highlighted item is boxed into an area that is lighter or brighter than the color of the background.

So why highlight anything on a menu?

“If a product wasn’t something we wanted to sell, it wouldn’t be on our menu at all, right?” “Everything is good on my menu.” According to the opinion of many restaurant operators, all the items on their menu should be highlighted. And from the perspective of the restaurant operator or chef, that’s probably true. Except that’s not how consumers look at menus or make decisions about what to eat at a restaurant.

When consumers go into a restaurant, they want to know what you recommend. They are looking for your advice, especially from the chef. So while everything is good, they aren’t going to order everything, they’re going to order something. And that something can have a huge impact on the overall success of your business. How well you position the items on your menu, how well you highlight them, is the secret to getting consumers to order something that will generate more profits.

Don’t Be Rude.

In fact, it’s just rude not to help your guest decide what to eat. It’s like someone asking you for directions and you say, “I dunno, go whatever way you want.” So while everything on your menu is good, some things are better. And the better item is an item that can become famous over time and that offers you higher than average profitability.

In the case of Biaggi’s and other restaurant operators like them, I could make a very good living on the money they are leaving on the table because they are not taking advantage of helping the guest make better choices in their restaurants. In fact, I offered to skip my regular fees and get paid just on how well the highlighted items performed. They turned me down on that idea, but I would have made a helluva lot more that way than I did on the design-engineering process.

Good Restaurant Menu Design Is Essential Today

There are two parts to any great menu. There is the science part, which is the engineering process we use, and then there is the art side of the menu, which is more subjective, but every bit as important … especially today with the amount of graphics people are exposed to.  In making over the Biaggi’s menu, we wanted to introduce more levels of color and texture along with design elements and details to help the consumer navigate the menu.

The final design gives Biaggi’s a more contemporary and stylish look that is a little more upscale than their original menu. At the same time, it is still very casual, which is just what the client wanted.

Contact HotOperator here to get started on your next restaurant menu design!

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