Free tool
Menu engineering matrix calculator
Type or paste each item’s menu price, food cost and units sold. The calculator works out contribution margin and menu mix, sorts every item into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs, draws the four-quadrant chart and prints the formulas next to the results. It runs in your browser: no account, nothing uploaded.
Before you trust the four boxes
- Three numbers per item: menu price, plate cost (every ingredient on the plate, garnish included) and units sold. Use one period for all items — two to four weeks is typical — or the mix percentages mean nothing.
- The method is Kasavana and Smith, 1982. Contribution margin is price minus food cost. The average is weighted by units sold, not a plain mean. The popularity line is 70% of an equal share: with 10 items, 7%.
- Run one category at a time. Entrées against entrées, desserts against desserts. A $6 brownie next to a $34 ribeye is always a Dog, and that tells you nothing.
- Manual entry or a pasted export only. There is no POS connection and nothing is uploaded; rows stay in this browser’s storage until you clear them. Print the report or download the CSV to keep it.
Once you know which items carry the margin, put them at the top of your online menu. Online ordering on your own Naratake site charges cards through your own Stripe account; Naratake takes 0% of the sale and you pay only Stripe’s card fee, so the margin you just measured is the margin you keep. Building and previewing is free; live ordering is part of Storefront Pro.
See commission-free online orderingCommon questions
What is a menu engineering matrix?
A 2×2 grid that places each menu item by profit and popularity. Profit is contribution margin: price minus food cost. Popularity is menu mix: the item’s share of units sold. Above average on both is a Star; popular but low-margin is a Plowhorse; high-margin but slow is a Puzzle; low on both is a Dog.
How is the popularity threshold calculated?
Kasavana and Smith set it at 70% of an equal share. If the category has 8 items, an equal share is 12.5% and the line sits at 8.75%. An item selling at or above that share counts as popular. The calculator shows the line and the arithmetic behind it.
Contribution margin or food cost percentage — which should I use?
Menu engineering uses contribution margin in money, because you bank dollars, not percentages. A steak at 40% food cost that leaves $19 on the plate beats a salad at 25% that leaves $7. Food cost percentage is still the right tool for pricing a single dish; the food cost calculator on this site does that.
Can it pull sales from my POS?
No. There is no POS integration and no account. Export a product-mix or item-sales report from your POS as CSV, paste the item, price, cost and quantity columns into the box, and the rows import. Nothing leaves your browser.