Menu engineering & menu psychology for restaurants and foodservice
More margin. From the same menu. No recipe or price changes.
Menu engineering with behavioural science. We use naming, placement and framing to steer what guests choose: toward your highest-margin dishes, often the plant-based ones. And we measure it in your POS data.
How much margin is your menu leaving on the table?
Estimate how much additional margin you could unlock annually, per location or across all your locations.
The sales mix shifted. Margins grew with it.
Different clients, different dining contexts, same method. Every figure comes from real POS data, measured before and after the redesign; in the chain pilot with a control site and the same period last year.
Based on anonymised client data · before/after POS measurement · method per case on request. All results →
We shift what guests choose.
Behaviour is the lever
Naming, order, placement and framing decide what gets ordered. That's menu psychology: we aim that pull at the dishes you want to sell more of.
Your margin moves with it
The dishes we push carry the best margin. So your margin rises without raising prices or changing recipes. Measured with clients: +3 to 8% per dish or food ticket.
A menu that keeps performing
New dishes, seasonal menus and moving food costs erode gains. So we keep your menu sharp every cycle, at one location or across a whole chain.
Scan first. Then design and measure. Then keep it sharp.
We start with a free scan. If the first cycle works, we keep your menu sharp every cycle after that.
Free menu scan
For anyone who wants to know where their menu leaves margin.
Upload your menu and see first insights within 2 minutes. Personal advice follows within 3 working days.
- Check on naming, placement and framing
- With POS data: menu-engineering matrix (Star · Puzzle · Plowhorse · Dog)
- The three to five biggest levers
- Free, no obligation
Smart Menu Sprint
Your menu redesigned, live and measured.
We redesign your menu, guide the launch and measure the effect in your POS data. For chains on a few test sites with a control site. If the result disappoints, you stop after this cycle.
- Redesign and copy in your tone of voice
- Item-level measurement in your POS data
- For chains: test sites vs a control site
- Opt out after the first cycle
Performance Partnership
Because a menu is never finished.
Without follow-up, gains erode. We keep your menu sharp: per menu cycle for single restaurants, per location for chains.
- Every new or seasonal menu built on the same logic
- Quarterly food cost check: we re-steer when purchase prices move
- Results every cycle, per location for chains
- Insights from comparable venues that sharpen with every client
After the first cycle the partnership continues unless you stop. No one-off projects, but a menu that keeps performing.
Four steps. One rhythm. Repeatable per menu and per location.
Not a one-off redesign but a fixed rhythm: from a first menu to a menu that keeps performing, at one location or across dozens.
Diagnose
Your menu and POS data. Every dish gets a place in the menu-engineering matrix: Star, Puzzle, Plowhorse or Dog.
Design & launch
New names, taste-led descriptions, layout and order. In your tone of voice.
Measure & adjust
Item-level before/after measurement in your POS data, with a control site for chains. No gut feel.
Keep it sharp
Every new menu on the same logic, a quarterly food cost check. For chains, rollout per cluster of comparable sites.
Same dishes. Different choices.
“A menu redesign shifted 60% of our main-dish sales toward plant-based, with the same dishes, same prices and same kitchen.”
“Only names and descriptions changed. Like-for-like: a +15.3 percentage-point shift toward non-meat sandwiches, +25% in units.”
“+€0.43 margin per ticket, +7.6% on food tickets. No recipe, price or operational change. Across 230 locations, that's worth rolling out.”
“Smart Menu Design's work is incredibly valuable to us in helping avoid our biases and stay focused on the guest's perspective.”