The 80/20 hiding in your menu

In almost every restaurant I look at, a handful of dishes carry the entire P&L — and a handful quietly bleed it dry. The difference between knowing which is which and guessing is usually five figures a year. Here is how to find them.

1. Pull two numbers per dish

From your POS: how many of each dish you sold in the last 90 days. From your recipe costing: the contribution margin per dish (price minus food cost). That is it — two numbers unlock everything.

2. Sort every dish into four boxes

• Stars: high sales, high margin. Your MVPs.
• Plowhorses: high sales, low margin. Beloved but underpriced.
• Puzzles: low sales, high margin. Great economics, nobody orders them.
• Dogs: low sales, low margin. Dead weight.

3. Act on each box differently

Stars get prime menu real estate — and never get 86’d on a busy night. Plowhorses get a 5–8% price increase (regulars won’t flinch) or a re-engineered plate cost. Puzzles get renamed, repositioned, or pushed by servers for two weeks; if they still don’t move, they were dogs in disguise. Dogs get cut. Every dog you keep costs you prep time, inventory dollars, and ticket complexity.

4. Watch the side effects

A tighter menu isn’t just cheaper — it’s faster. Fewer dishes means shorter ticket times, less waste, and a line that can actually execute on a Saturday. The P&L improvement is only half the win.