Chapter 4 The Menu: The Foundation For Control

 The menu as a control and marketing tool 

Menu is the primary sales tool for any restaurant operation. Menu must:

1. Satisfy guest expectations

2. Achieve quality goal

3. Cost effective

4. Must be accurate



Menus in foodservice establishments generally fall into one of the following three major categories:

1) Standard Menu

2) Daily Menu

3) Cycle Menu


Menu planning 

Knowing Your Guest

.Guest preferences are learned by interviewing guests, reading surveys, comment cards and trade journals and studying production sales record 

Knowing Your Operation
- Theme of Cuisine
- Equipment
- Personnel
- Quality Standards
- Budget


Menu planners create a pool of possible menu items using; 

• Old menus 
• Trade magazines 
• Books 
• Cookbooks for home market


Once the pool has been narrowed down, some of it might be eliminated because of; 

• Cost 
• Incompatibility with the operation’s theme or cuisine, number of employees skills, with the operation’s quality standards 
• Unavailable equipment 
• Insufficient equipment capacity, kitchen space, number of employee


Menu Balance – once all the menu items have been selected, it should be reviewed by;

• Business balance – Balance between food costs, menu prices, the popularity of items and financial and marketing consideration

• Aesthetic Balance – Degree to which meals have been constructed with an eye to the colors, textures and flavors of food

• Nutritional Balance – Make sure the components of well balanced meal are available 


Rationalization and cross-utilization 

Pricing Methods 
• Matching Competitors’ Prices 
• Adding Desired Contribution Margins to Portion Costs 
• Calculating Prices from Cost and Costs Percents 

Other Pricing Methods 
• The Reasonable Price Method 
• The Highest Price Method 
• The Loss Leader Price Method 
• The Intuitive Price Method


Contribution margin: basis of profitability 


. Contribution margin is defined as the amount that remains after the product cost of menu item is subtracted from the item’s selling price.

. It is the amount that a menu item contributes to paying for your labor and other expenses and providing the profit.

. Establishing menu price using this philosophy is a matter of combining product cost with a predetermined contribution margin.



Menu engineering and improving the menu 

 . It provides a means for monitoring the effectiveness of efforts to maximize gross revenue in a menu.

Result definition 

• Star is a menu item that produce both high contribution margin and high volume.

• Dog is a menu item that produces a comparatively low contribution margin and accounts for relatively low volume.

• Plowhorse is a menu item that produces a low contribution margin but accounts for relatively high volume. These items have broad appeal to customer, but contribution comparatively little profit per unit sold.

• Puzzle is a menu item that produces a high contribution margin but accounts for comparatively low sales volume. 



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