Restaurant Menu Matrix: Now Is The Perfect Time

With nearly every restaurant we work with on a menu makeover we like to start with a restaurant menu matrix or scatter graph. This is an essential process to go through before making any menu changes. If you don’t use a menu matrix you are only guessing at what is working and what needs to be improved. Most point of sale systems will make a menu matrix for you. But if yours doesn’t, reach out to HotOperator here and I’ll make my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet available that you can simply fill in on your own.

Better yet, have us develop the scatter graph for you. In this way, you will get an objective review of your business. Most restaurant owners and managers think they can do a restaurant menu matrix on their own. And in some ways that’s true. Except it helps to get a fresh view of your restaurant menu matrix, and now is the perfect time.

What Is A Restaurant Menu Matrix

What a menu matrix does is break your menu items down into four categories.

Stars, items with above average profit contribution and above average popularity.

Puzzles, or items with above average profit contribution and below average popularity.

Workhorses, those items on your menu with an above average popularity and below average profit contribution.

Dogs, items that have both lower than average popularity and profit contribution.

When a restaurant menu matrix is looked at by a professional design-engineer, this document can tell you a great deal about which items to cut from the menu, which items to add, and where you can take a price increase.

A professional restaurant menu matrix will often confirm some of your initial expectations. But there are often some surprises. The best part of having HotOperator develop a Restaurant Menu Matrix is we offer ideas. Restaurant business runs on fresh ideas.

About HotOperator

HotOperator is a foodservice marketing agency. We love restaurants. We want them to survive. But we can’t do that unless we work together. Hire us to help you romance your restaurant brand.

Mark and Kelly are a marketing team and managing partners of HotOperator. They have been working in the restaurant business since 1989. Contact them through the HotOperator website, or by calling 800-316-3198, or contact Laux here.