Enter cost, price and units sold. Each item is placed against your own menu average — Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle or Dog — with an action for each.
Benchmarks come from what you entered: average contribution margin $9.80, popularity threshold 14.0% of units. Enter a whole menu or a whole category — a handful of items will misclassify.
Popularity across · contribution margin up
Total contribution for the period: $10,709.60
Protect it. Keep quality and placement exactly as they are.
Nasi lemak special
Popular but thin. Re-cost the recipe or nudge the price up.
Char kuey teow, Iced kopi
Good margin, rarely ordered. Promote it or move it up the menu.
Ribeye 250g
Low margin and unpopular. Usually a candidate for removal.
Garden salad
MinimalPOS reports units sold per item for any period, so you can run this on real sales mix instead of an estimate — and see it change after you act on it.
How this free tool helps
Menu engineering plots each dish on two axes: how much margin it makes, and how often it sells. Enter your items with cost, price and units sold for a period, and each one is placed in one of four quadrants with a recommended action — promote it, re-price it, re-cost it, or take it off.
This analysis is only as good as the sales mix behind it. MinimalPOS reports units sold per item over any period, so the popularity half of the matrix comes from your own till rather than from an estimate.
Explore MinimalPOS Restaurant POSStars are high margin and popular — protect them. Plowhorses are popular but low margin — try to re-cost or nudge the price. Puzzles are high margin but sell rarely — promote or reposition them. Dogs are low margin and unpopular — usually candidates for removal.
Against your own menu average, not a fixed number. An item is 'high margin' if its contribution margin beats the average across the items you entered, and 'popular' if its share of units sold beats what an even split would give. That is why you should enter your whole menu, or a whole category, rather than a handful of items.
Selling price minus item cost. It is what each sale contributes toward rent, labour and profit. Menu engineering uses contribution margin in currency rather than food cost percentage, because a high-percentage item that sells in volume can still contribute more cash than a low-percentage one that rarely sells.
Quarterly is a reasonable rhythm for most venues, and after any significant supplier price change or menu revision. Use a period long enough to be representative — a single quiet week will misclassify seasonal items.
Continue planning
Looking for operating advice? Read the MinimalPOS restaurant guides.