New Menu Item: Good Idea or Total Waste?

With limited space to convey the details of your restaurant’s menu, you have to be picky about what makes it to print. Upserve’s restaurant menu analytics can tell you whether a given dish is bolstering your bottom line or if it’s a drag on resources.

Furthermore, you can use our restaurant menu software to determine which 80 percent of a restaurant’s food sales are coming from which 16 percent of menu items.

Think: seven options per category (and don’t go too crazy with categories).

Planning a new menu? Check out Upserve’s Your Menu Here: our free restaurant menu design software to build, save, and print your custom menu!

Once you’ve run the numbers on each menu item with our restaurant menu management software tools, use what you’ve learned to determine top promotional opportunities. Instruct servers to talk up menu items (especially entrees) that you know bring customers back and have bigger profit margins vs those that may be really popular but aren’t your repeat guests’ favorites.

Menu Intelligence Made Easy

Just as you do your best work in the hospitality industry, we shine when it comes to helping our customers make sense of huge chunks of data. Know which items are driving your sales, which ones are diving your bottom line, which ones to push, and which to ‘86. Specifically, we help you understand how each menu item is performing at-a-glance.

Our system categorizes performance as such:

  • “One-Hit Wonders”: People who buy a lot but never return.
  • “Greatest Hits”: Popular and keeps ‘em coming back for more!
  • “Underperformers”: You’ll want to get rid of these.
  • “Hidden Gems”: Make sure your servers know to promote these!
Restaurant Menu item performance analytics

What’s Our Best Menu Category?

Although the answer is usually entrees when it comes to gross margin contribution, you may find that upselling appetizers or drinks can be similarly lucrative for your restaurant—or even better!

In general, food accounts for 66 percent of most restaurants’ menu sales. In the beverage department, which contributes to 34 percent of sales, alcoholic beverages (such as mixed
drinks) account for almost half of all alcoholic sales.

Before you design another menu, check out our in-depth infographic, “The Science of Restaurant Menus”. In the infographic, we dig into pricing, whitespace, juicy descriptions, and menu mistakes.

Another quick tip? If you’re looking to find areas to significantly increase bottom-line revenue, look at the pricing on your cocktail list first.

Menu item performance magic quadrant
“We know if a product is a one time- it’s a one hit wonder, or is it a product that people order again and again over time, which helps us pick our menu items. It gives us data that we otherwise wouldn’t have.”
Ron KollerOwner, The Malted Barley

How Do Specific Servers Affect Specific Menu Item Sales?

There are certain situations where it makes sense to compare menu item performance across more than one dimension. If you’ve ever wondered, “How does a particular server influence the sales of a given menu item”, you’ll be excited to know that we can provide an answer with actual sales figures.

Menu engineering on it’s own isn’t effective without staff training. Upserve connects your menu’s performance with server performance. You can see who is lagging on selling the special and who is a superstar, so one could coach the other and deliver better results. Empower your management decisions with Upserve’s user-friendly insights.

Restaurant menu item sales analysis

Menu Management On The Go

Access all of Upserve HQ with the flick of your finger by using our mobile restaurant management app, available for both iOS and Android devices. While you’re logged in, make sure to check in via Logbook, then dig deeper into Server Performance and Sales Analytics for long-term insights.

Restaurant server menu item sales

How Does Menu Design Affect Sales?

Through a study that analyzed millions of transactions from restaurants around the country, ranging from quick service to full service (and a whole lot of extra research on top of that!), we learned a lot about what works—and what works against you—when it comes to menu design.

Here are some of the most intriguing insights:

  • One photo next to a menu item increases sales by 30%. To avoid going overboard, try adding one menu item photo per page of your menu.
  • The Center for Hospitality Research found that people spend significantly more at restaurants where menus do not include dollar signs. So instead of charging “$15.00” for that pasta, you’re better off listing it as “15.00”, or even just “15”. Best yet, don’t draw any attention to price—“nest” the price discreetly after each menu item’s description.
  • Use the concept of anchoring to invoke comparison with your most expensive menu items at the top of the list. Subsequent menu items will look like a great value in comparison, helping you to sell more of them.
  • Speaking of which, use detailed descriptions to improve the perception of value. Capture attention with a little textual food porn. Evocative, suggestive dish names can increase sales by as much as 25%. And people seem to appreciate a description broaching on novel status: Longer menu descriptions sell 30% more food.

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Learn how our Restaurant POS and Management Platform can help you:

  • Boost sales by 30%
  • Increase staff productivity
  • Manage your restaurant from anywhere, 24/7