Menu Engineering Co.

Menu engineering

Same covers. Same kitchen. More margin.

For UK restaurants, pubs, hotels and catering groups. Every dish costed and scored, the actions ranked by cash impact, the result measured at twelve weeks.

Pork belly, croquette, fondant potato, tenderstem, plated on a white plate with a blue rim.
Pork belly, croquette, fondant potato. A cheap cut, plated to sell at a premium price.
Send your menu How it works
  • Chef-ledFirst-hand kitchen experience
  • 3 AA RosettesThe Peacock at Rowsley
  • Multi-site experienceHead chef across seven sites
  • Profit-focusedMenus built around profit
  • 12-week reviewPerformance measured against baseline

Most menus are priced once and then never audited again.

Ingredient prices move every quarter. Portion sizes drift. A new starter goes on because a supplier had a deal that week, and it stays for three years. Meanwhile nobody has costed the beef cheek since the last time the price of beef made anyone nervous.

The result is a menu where a handful of dishes quietly subsidise the rest, the best sellers are often the worst earners, and the kitchen is working harder every service for profit that keeps sliding.

Menu engineering fixes that with arithmetic rather than opinion. Every dish gets scored on two things, the cash it earns and how often it sells, and the actions follow from where it lands.

Read the full guide to menu engineering

Where is your menu losing you money?

Menu performance is not one number. These four move independently, and a site is rarely losing on all of them at once, which is the whole reason the audit scores them separately.

Food cost

Plate cost drifts quietly. The spec says one portion, the section plates another, and nothing has been costed against this quarter's invoices.

Explore food cost

Selling price

Marking every dish to the same percentage pushes a menu toward cheap, efficient plates and penalises the expensive ones that carry the evening.

Explore selling price

Contribution

A percentage flatters a £7 starter over a £32 main. The starter looks healthy on paper while the pounds it earns per guest stay small.

Explore contribution

Kitchen reality

A dish needing two minutes of assembly and a garnish nobody can repeat under pressure drifts from its specification within a month.

Explore kitchen reality

Not sure which of the four is costing you most? Send me the menu and I will find out.

Send your menu

Four kinds of kitchen, one arithmetic problem.

Each has its own pressures and its own version of this work. How it differs by sector

Independent restaurants

Single site operators with 25 to 60 covers and a menu that has grown by accretion.

Hotels and country houses

Restaurant, bar, banqueting and room service running off one kitchen and one budget.

Pubs and gastropubs

Wet led sites where food has to earn its place rather than simply exist.

Catering and multi site groups

Contract caterers, care and education groups needing costed, repeatable specs.

Explore menu profitability

Every section of your menu has a chance to earn more. Explore how menu engineering can help make every dish work harder.

See all five menu sections

What a menu audit examines

Your menu has more potential than you think.

Every dish has a cost. Every sale has a contribution. The opportunity is understanding how they work together.

Send your menuSee what the audit covers

  1. 01

    Food cost

    Inaccurate portion costs, ingredient waste, and where the gross profit margin can be improved.

  2. 02

    Dish profitability

    Which dishes generate the greatest cash contribution, rather than the best-looking percentage margin.

  3. 03

    Menu performance

    Underperforming dishes, sales mix opportunities and the changes that lift overall menu profitability.

  4. 04

    Kitchen efficiency

    Yield, portion consistency, preparation processes and the operational detail that decides whether a dish makes money in service.

The menu should work harder.

A menu should do more than look good. It should generate stronger margins, increase spend per cover and make every service work harder.

Every engagement starts with a baseline: profit on food, average spend per guest and what sells.

Then the menu changes. The measurement does not.

Twelve weeks later the same three numbers are pulled again.

Read the case study

Food gross profit margin

69.8%Before 73.4%After

+3.6percentage points

Average spend per cover

£19Before £24After

+£5per cover

Saturday covers

300Before 650After

2.17×the covers, +350

A great dish should taste good. It should make money, too.

Great food is only part of a successful menu. Every dish needs to be costed, priced and designed to deliver a healthy return without compromising quality or kitchen operations.

From the invoice to the plate, every decision has a commercial purpose.

All eighteen dishes, and the results behind them

Five commercial tests for every dish

  1. 01

    True plate cost

    Every ingredient costed at usable weight against current supplier invoices.

    Know exactly what each plate costs to produce.

  2. 02

    Price with purpose

    Prices set around ingredient costs, customer expectations and what the market will pay.

    Protect margins without pricing customers out.

  3. 03

    Profit per dish

    Cash contribution in pounds as well as percentage gross profit.

    Understand which dishes actually make you money.

  4. 04

    Built for service

    Preparation time, assembly, skill and kitchen capacity.

    Dishes your team can deliver consistently at full capacity.

  5. 05

    Yield and waste

    Trim, usable ingredients, offcuts and by-products.

    Turn more of every ingredient into something saleable.

Good food. Sound economics. Consistent execution.

On the plate
Quality, presentation and portion consistency.
On the numbers
Ingredient cost, selling price and cash contribution.
In the kitchen
Preparation, skill, speed and ingredient utilisation.
Salmon scotch egg, salsa verde, fennel, watercress, plated.
Yield & waste Salmon scotch egg, salsa verde, fennel, watercress The commercial thinking
  • Uses trim generated when preparing salmon fillets.
  • Turns a kitchen by-product into a premium starter.
  • Creates additional revenue from ingredients already purchased.
Tested on Yield and waste, true plate cost
Pan-fried fish fillet on cauliflower purée with roast cauliflower, brown shrimp, capers and amaranth, on a sand coloured plate.
Portion economics Pan-fried fish, cauliflower, brown shrimp, capers The commercial thinking
  • Uses complementary ingredients to build flavour.
  • Balances the cost of the main protein against supporting ingredients.
  • Keeps perceived value without an oversized fish portion.
Tested on True plate cost, profit per dish
Brioche pudding with a waffle cone, vanilla ice cream, raspberries, a caramelised panel and a jug of custard on a white plate, plated.
Batch preparation Brioche pudding, vanilla ice cream, raspberry The commercial thinking
  • Baked ahead and finished in seconds.
  • Plated to look worth the money.
  • Won on menu mix only if the section can plate it mid service.
Tested on Built for service, price with purpose

Dishes and photographs from kitchens Ryan ran in post, not consultancy engagements.

See a full analysis of an example menu

Four ways to bring me in.

01

Menu audit

Every dish costed, scored and classified. You get the numbers, the quadrant and a ranked list of changes.

See the audit 02

Menu redesign

The rebuild. Dish mix, pricing architecture, section order, wording and layout, taken through to a signed off menu.

See the redesign 03

New product development

NPD sprints for groups and multi site operators. Concept to costed, spec'd dishes your kitchens trial and scale.

See NPD sprints 04

Ongoing retainer

Monthly costing reviews, seasonal changes and a standing line to call when a supplier price moves.

See retainers

A multi site pub group, repositioned around a single cuisine

Sliced pink lamb rump with fennel, anchovy, grilled tomato and salsa verde on a white plate.

Saturday covers 300650

An anonymised project. The site was trading a standard pub menu and sitting mid table in the group's internal rankings. A new head chef rebuilt the offer around a single cuisine the local market was not being served. Same room, same trading hours, and no new capacity was built.

What changed

  • Repositioned from standard pub fare to a focused menu in a single cuisine, built around dishes with demonstrated demand
  • Built around high gross profit components, with protein portions controlled to spec
  • Shortened the supply chain on the core lines, improving product and margin together
  • Full cook off for the whole front of house team at every menu change

Work carried out in post as an employee, not a consultancy engagement

Read the full case study, and what was held constant

Ryan Purrington, chef and menu engineering consultant.
Chef Operator Menu engineering consultant

Menu engineering is not something I have simply read about. It has been a core part of how I have been measured throughout my 10+ year career.

Now teaching professional cookery at the University of Derby, with this consultancy as the commercial half of the same work.

How I work, and what the credential does and does not prove

  • 70% food gross profit

    Held month after month as head chef of a multi site pub group, through weekly stock takes.

  • 7 sites

    Food developed across a seven site group, each serving over 800 covers a week.

  • 3 AA Rosette level

    Two spells cooking at that level, at The Peacock at Rowsley.

See what every dish is really earning.

Cost a dish, see what it earns, and see where it sits on the menu engineering matrix.

The free tools work out what a dish costs, what it earns and the profit on every guest, so a menu decision comes from the numbers rather than from instinct.

Open the food cost calculator Explore all tools
Pork belly with croquette and fondant potato
Pork belly £19.50
Plate cost
£5.10
Food cost, net
31.4%
Gross profit
£11.15
Sales a week
118
Star High sales / high margin
High margin Low margin Low sales High sales
Puzzle Low sales / high margin

Earns well when it sells. Fix the positioning and the description before you touch the recipe.

Star High sales / high margin

Protect it, spec it tightly, and test whether it will carry a price rise.

Dog Low sales / low margin

Costs prep time and menu space for very little back. Rebuild it or remove it.

Plowhorse High sales / low margin

Pulls people in and gives the margin back. Engineer the plate cost, not the popularity.

The dish and its figures are illustrative, not a client result. Run your own on the calculator.

Written for operators, not for the algorithm.

Practical pieces on costing, pricing and profitability, drawn from work on live sites rather than from a textbook.

Food cost

Food cost control: the eleven leaks that show up on every audit

Where the gap between your theoretical and actual food cost is really coming from, and the order to close it in.

Read the guide Pricing

How to price a menu when the numbers have to work

Why the standard formula returns a net figure, and what that costs you on a UK menu.

Read the guide Labour

The labour cost hidden in your menu

Two dishes that earn the same, and one of them is eating your section's day.

Read the guide

All guides

Send me your current menu and last quarter's food GP.

Thirty minutes on a call is usually enough to tell you whether there is meaningful margin sitting in your menu and roughly where it is. No charge for that conversation, and no deck.

Send your menu Compare the services