Menu ItemShrimpOystersFriesSlidersSoupSaladTotalAverage Number ofEach Item SoldPopularity BenchmarkAverage WeightedCMNumber Sold$1,3996491,6522,0261,822976$Item Sales Price Item Food Cost Margin$$2\mathrm{.}37$$$8\mathrm{.}00$$$9\mathrm{.}00$$$5\mathrm{.}00$$$9\mathrm{.}00$$$6\mathrm{.}00$$$7\mathrm{.}00$$$3\mathrm{.}02$S$0\mathrm{.}78$$$1\mathrm{.}90$$$0\mathrm{.}67$$$1\mathrm{.}53$Contribution$($HIL$)$y $($HIL$)$Item Contribution $=$ Item Sales Price $-$ Item Food $($or beverage$)$Menu Contribution $=$ Item Contribution Margin X Number Sold $($forAverage number of each item sold $/$ by number of offerings soldPopularity Benchmark$-$average number of items sold x$\mathrm{.}70$Average Weighted CM$-$Total menu contribution $/$ Total number ofPopularity depends if the number sold is higher than the popularity benchamarkMore information can be found on pg $217-221$

menu items and then adjusting the menu to increase overall business profit. Each menu item is scored as high or low profitability and high or low popularity. Once a menu planner knows how each item scores, he is better able to tweak a menu to make it more profitable.

The data used to conduct a menu analysis is easily compiled from sales records and recipe costing sheets. As a single unusual sales day skews the data, it is best to use sales and costing data over a period of several months, not days or weeks, to minimize the impact of any anomalics.

The process to conduct a menu analysis $($as part of the menu engineering process$)$ is complex, so the computations for calculating an item's popularity and profitability are described separately subsequently.

Popularity

The first step in conducting a menu analysis is to determine the relative popularity of each menu item. While it is possible to compare any item to any other menu item, the best comparison is between items from the same menu category. For example, almost everyone who patronizes a restaurant orders an entr$$e$.$ If a menu planner were trying to decide which dishes to remove or to modify, would it be helpful to know that each entr$$e sells better than the best$-$selling appetizer? No$.$ A menu planner would be foolish to constantly replace appetizers and leave the entr$$e selections alone in order to increase sales. Guests looking to eat a full meal will not stop ordering entr$$es to purchase appetizers instead, no matter how good the appetizers sound. A more valuable analysis compares entr$$es to other entr$$es and appetizers to other appetizers.

Whether to analyze each heading separately or to combine certain headings is completely up to the menu planner. This chapter uses the term "menu category" rather than "menu heading" as the menu planner may choose to treat multiple headings as a single category. For example, a menu planner may wish to treat the menu headings "from the sea," "from the land," and "from the air" as a single "entr$$e$"$ category. Similarly, if a menu lists soups, salads, and appetizers under three different headings but customers generally only order only one starter before their entr$$e$,$ then the menu planner should treat these three headings as a single category for analysis purposes.

To calculate whether a menu item is an above$-$average or below$-$average seller within its menu category, a menu planner must first determine the average number of each item sold within that category. To do so$,$ the menu planner begins with a chart listing each of the menu items and how many of each are sold over a period of time$-$usually one or more months. Each menu category is analyzed separately. The average number sold is calculated by totaling the number of items sold in a category and dividing by the number of menu item listings in the category. The Table $11\mathrm{.}1$ series illustrates this process for a set of entr$$es$.$

Table $11\mathrm{.}1$a shows that there are seven entr$$es available for sale. Over the examined period, $6,025$ entr$$es are sold. Calculating $6,025($the total number of entr$$es sold$)7($the number of entr$$es listed on the menu$)=860\mathrm{.}7($the average number of each entr$$e sold$).$

$\backslash$table$[[$Menu Item,Number Sold$],[$Chicken$,1,380],[$Beef$,1,092],[$Pork$,881],[$Lamb$,600],[$Salmon$,905],[$Crab$,746],[$Vegetarian$,421],[$Total$,6,025],[$Average number of each item sold,$6,0257=860\mathrm{.}7$