Food menu engineering

Menu engineering Student Name: Student Number: School Name: Introduction What is the menu engineering? The term engineering is rarely used in the context of food industry. Engineering techniques and concepts can be used to attain desired results in the hospitality industry. The concept of menu engineering was developed by Kasavana & Smith (1982) which is a menu analysis methodology of evaluating and monitoring performances of individual menu item. Menu engineering involves taking a more structured approach to build and monitor food menu in restaurants. It uses two key measures to classify menu items namely: The contribution and popularity. Contribution or gross margin is the amount of money from selling the menu item. It is calculated as selling price minus direct cost of production. On the other hand, popularity is the number of sales of the menu item in a given period in comparison with other menu items. Menu items are classified into four main groups based on their contribution and popularity, (Schwartz, 2006) as shown in the figure below:  INCLUDEPICTURE "http://foodmargin.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/menu_engineering.png?w=480" \* MERGEFORMATINET 
 Figure 1. Four Categories of menu items. Source: Food margin (2009). Stars are items characterized by high contribution and high popularity Plough Horse has low contribution but high popularity. Puzzles has high contribution and low popularity and finally Dogs with low contribution and low popularity Menu engineering strictly focuses on the actual money from each menu item rather than the cost percentages. This is because a more costly menu item can have high gross margin or contribution in terms of dollars as compared to the less costly item depending on their respective prices, (Pavesic, 1983): Secondly, popularity must also be considered together with item contributions when ranking menu items. A popular item with low profit margin can be ranked higher than an item with high profit mar...