Part one of this series on menu engineering, covered its theory explaining the “how” and “why.” This second installment examines practical examples while exploring the digital dimension of menu engineering, integrating recent technological advances with menu engineering theory to improve customer utility and enhance the quality of information that restaurant operators can use improve their menus.
As mentioned in part one, first developed in the 1980s, menu engineering is hardly a novel endeavor to experienced restaurant operators. Still, hospitality consultants are often employed to analyze customer behavior to deploy menu engineering techniques.
In the less than two-minutes that guests scan a menu, as mentioned in part one of the series, furious activity goes through the mind. Where the eyes of diners focus their attention, the impression the dishes make on guests, and pricing, constitute key elements of the decision-making process that a customer undergoes. A well-engineered menu can have a profound impact on the result of that process.
Brian Hopkins, founder and president of The Fifteen Group Inc., a North America-wide hospitality consultancy, is no stranger to menu engineering. In short, he said it’s not a gimmick or trickery to influence customer choices but grounded in science to improve the financial performance of restaurants.
“Menu engineering is almost all analytics,” Hopkins said, adding: “It’s about looking at the profitability of items, looking at how they sell, looking at what's ordered with them, looking at all the data, and figuring out how to maximize the profitability of a menu from an analytical point of view –but not so much a flavor point of view.”
Hopkins claims that most restaurants are locked in a bad marriage to the percentage cost approach.
“So, what a lot of restaurant owners will do, and even large groups have done this, they'll cost out menu items, like, say, okay, this, whatever pasta dish cost me $10 to plate it. That's the cost of the ingredients. I want it to be a 30 percent food cost, so I'm going to sell it for $33. I would say 90 percent of restaurants, that's how they go about costing and pricing their menu. That is the wrong way to price your menu,” Hopkins asserted.
Again, he emphasizes contribution not only should influence what is emphasized on a menu but also should be considered in formulating the pricing strategy, for the number beside the dish is maybe more important to the customer than how it’s made or what ingredients it contains.
“We had a steak and seafood restaurant that was using that 30 percent approach to how they priced their menu. So, they had all these steaks on the menu, I’m going to say for the sake of argument, priced at, $49, $48, $50, and they were making a 30 percent profit margin, let's say, on each steak,” Hopkins recounted.
“And then they had this surf and turf, which was a steak with two lobster tails. – a phenomenal dish - but it cost them around $30 to plate it. So, using the 30 percent food cost methodology, they said, well, if we want a 30 percent food cost, we need to price this at $90. But all their other steak dishes on the menu were $48, $52, whatever, and then they had this surf and turf at $96…right… and when we engineered their menu, we said, well, why on earth do you have that at $96? Despite being a great dish, nobody was buying it because of the extravagant price.”
When Hopkins asked the client about it, they told him they were adhering to a 30 percent food cost. “And we said, well, hang on, why are you okay making $30 profit off every guest that orders a steak? But on this surf and turf, you feel like you need to make $60 profit off the guest?”
Hopkins and his team convinced the client to drop the price of the surf and turf by around $30.
“I forget the final contribution, but it became their most profitable item,” Hopkins said. “After letting go of their rigid pricing strategy, the dish became really approachable for customers, holding a greater value proposition. I think we even called it out on the menu. Guests started ordering it more stealing sales away from less profitable steaks. And guests left going, ‘Oh my gosh, that was huge value for what we got.’ So, it just massively improved their profitability, because now they were focused on the profit margin, and delivering a great value to the guest.”
In his anecdote, Hopkins followed menu engineering theory to the letter, as detailed in part one, a system developed by business school professors, Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith of Michigan State university.
The example is also consistent with consumer studies. In McKinsey’s consumer research, the well-known consulting company reveals that in many markets, dining behavior is increasingly influenced by value considerations. That’s certainly what Hopkins and his team found.
Value is not just a matter of dollars and cents. As the world becomes increasingly health conscious and ingredient savvy, pushing dishes, some high margin, some not so high margin, for their health benefits as much as contribution on a menu, can be worked into one’s overall engineering strategy. Such shifts keep a menu current. There is more than one lesson in Hopkins anecdote: it’s important to be flexible in one’s pricing and placement strategies.
Value, however, is as much perception as it is a function of quants. Here menu psychology becomes germane to that furious activity going on in diners’ minds as they look through menus.
Design for Profitability: The Psychology Behind a Great Menu
In typical parlance, a menu is merely a list of items. By contrast, in the hospitality sector, a menu is a carefully designed sales tool.
Research into consumer psychology has revealed that when the human mind recalls things, it exhibits a phenomenon called cognitive bias, the most common of which is the tendency to remember the first things they see (aptly called the primacy effect) and, to a lesser extent, the last or most recent (the recency effect). What lies in between has to work much harder to get cognitive attention.
Cognitive bias is behind the placement recommendations discussed in part one — why restaurants often place their most profitable dishes where the diner’s eyes naturally land first. Effective menu design is about guiding attention.
Other elements of menu psychology indicate how diners assimilate menu content to make dining choices based on various elements, such as: placement; pricing; formatting and use of fonts; color choices; description; where the eyes can be predicted to focus; and where applicable pictures/graphics or deliberate omission of visuals.
Catching the Eye: The Importance of Placement and Highlighting
Studies have shown that consumer behavior consistently shows that guests do not read menus line-by-line from beginning to end like a book or a newspaper article. Instead, their eyes gravitate toward specific areas of a page.
Many menu designers refer to this behavior as the “golden triangle,” where attention is concentrated in the center, upper-right, and upper-left sections of the menu.
Smart menu design uses visual cues, which are sometimes called “eye magnets” to call attention to offerings that operators wish to highlight. These typically include: a splash of color; a distinctive font; well-chosen photograph or illustration; a boxed feature; and sometimes even deliberately positioned white space around a dish (also called negative space).
Perhaps the most critical factor in effective guidance of attention involves exhibiting appropriate restraint. Presence of too many visual elements don’t tend to complement one another; rather, they compete for attention, and the result is that nothing ends up standing out as intended.
High-margin signature dishes, whether popular or not (typically, Stars– see part one for reference) should occupy these premium locations.
While fundamental tactics like strategic item placement and thoughtful layout are universally applicable, distinct restaurant formats require specialized approaches.
Menu Types
Quick Service Restaurants - a dining establishment that focuses on speed, affordability, and convenience.
- Curated Variety: Limit selections to 5–7 items per category to provide ample choice without causing decision fatigue.
- Bundle Anchoring: Strongly promote combo meals to guide guests toward pre-packaged deals, effectively boosting the average check size.
- Visual Appeals: Rely heavily on high-quality, vibrant photography with bright colours that triggers immediate cravings.
- Value-Centric Layouts: Structure the menu to emphasize volume and affordability, reinforcing the perception of getting more for less.
- Often Utilize Combo Decoys: Position a heavily upgraded large meal option next to a medium option to make the price gap feel small.
Fast Casual - a hybrid dining style that combine the speed and counter service of fast food with the higher-quality, fresher ingredients and nicer atmosphere of casual sit-down dining.
- Balanced Autonomy: Provide opportunities for personalization without making the ordering process tedious.
- Dual-Track Structuring: Present a deliberate mix of "Design Your Own" builds and signature "Chef's Specials." This appeals equally to patrons who crave culinary control and those who prefer a curated, expert-vetted meal.
- Strategic Framing: Position these choices clearly to elevate the dining experience and subtly encourage guests to add premium add-ons.
Casual & Full Service - a sit-down establishment where a waitstaff guides your entire meal from a hosted seating to post-meal payment, while a casual restaurant (or casual dining) is actually a specific, popular subcategory of full-service dining that offers mid-priced food in a relaxed, family-friendly environment.
- The Golden Triangle: As mentioned, position high-yield dishes in the center and upper corners of the menu—the zones where a diner’s eyes naturally land first.
- Price Anchoring: This segment make use of introducing premium, higher-priced beside target dishes to make high-margin dishes look like a better financial deal by comparison.
- Tableside Upselling: Utilizing front-of-house staff by investing in training them to complement the physical menu by suggesting pairings, appetizers, and premium substitutes during the ordering process is a tactic used in this and the fine dining segment.
Fine Dining – establishments focusing on an upscale eating experience centered on high-quality food, elegant ambiance, and formal service.
- Narrative Descriptions: Here, the focus shifts entirely away from cost by using evocative, story-driven language that highlights ingredient origins and culinary craftsmanship.
- Text-Only Elegance: Absent these menus is food photography entirely, relying instead on minimalist design and sophisticated prose to foster an aura of exclusive luxury.
Bars & Breweries - food and beverage service venues within the hospitality industry, specializing in alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Bars focus on serving mixed drinks, beer, and wine to guests, while breweries manufacture beer on-site and often include a taproom or brewpub for direct public hospitality service.
- Bookend Placement: This segment features high-profit beverages at the very top and absolute bottom of lists, as these spots naturally capture the most consumer attention.
- Signature Anchors: It uses distinctive, house-crafted cocktails or brews as focal points to draw attention to high-margin offerings.
- Samplers and Packages: Promotion of tasting flights and drink-and-snack pairings to encourage patrons to explore the menu and extend their stay is a key tactic employed here.
The Digital Breakthrough: How Restaurant Apps, Delivery Platforms and AI Are Changing What We Order
A well-engineered menu ought to drive profit and realize efficiencies. However, many restaurants lose margins to bloated coverage, slow prep times, and low-performing items hidden in plain sight. The flexibility and specificity offered by digital menus can remedy a physical menu that is weighed down by its contents.
These days, brands are simplifying menus to cut waste, speed up kitchens, and focus on high-margin dishes armed with the knowledge that clarity and targeting both drive profit.
A lot of operators lack the tools to see what works and what hurts revenue during a period in which the profile of diners has been changing rapidly, beginning with the lockdowns that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Diners turned to delivery more so than at any point in history – and while people no longer face restraints to dining out, many have gotten used to using their smartphone or tablet to order in. Digital devices, hence, are becoming the new form of menu and require engineering just as in-house physical menus do.
Whether customers are ordering through a restaurant's proprietary app, scanning a QR code at the table, or browsing a third-party app like Uber Eats or DoorDash, digital menus have become one of the restaurant industry's most powerful sales tools. What’s more is that these apps are not static. They can change in real time, adapt to customer behavior, and even use artificial intelligence to recommend what diners are most likely to buy.
In 2026, menu engineering isn't simply about designing a menu. It's about designing an experience.
A printed menu shows every customer the same thing at the same time. A restaurant app is not similarly constrained.
Many restaurant apps now personalize the ordering experience. Repeat customers click on their app icon to see see their favorite dishes first, and receive recommendations based on previous orders and ratings on those orders. They can also be offered limited-time promotions tailored to their buying habits.
Someone who regularly orders vegetarian meals may automatically see plant-based specials at the top of the menu. A customer who frequently buys premium steaks may be shown pairings, accompaniments or chef's specials before anything else.
This personalized approach increases convenience for diners while helping restaurants increase average order values.
Restaurant apps also provide more valuable data than traditional menus ever could. Operators can see in real time, which dishes are viewed most often, which items are most abandoned by customers prior to completing the sale, and which combinations tend to be purchased together. These insights stimulate menus to evolve continuously instead of remaining unchanged for months, reviewed only at set intervals.
Third-Party Delivery Apps Shape Customer Choices
Delivery platforms such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub and Deliveroo have become major players in menu engineering.
Unlike traditional menus, these platforms rely heavily on search algorithms, featured collections, customer ratings and promotional placement. A dish isn't competing only with other items on the same menu. Rather, it may be competing with hundreds of similar offerings from nearby restaurants. So, menu optimization becomes more prescient in a digital environment. Optionality brings in more competition, and greater demand for “eyes on” a dish.
Successful restaurants simplify online menus, use clear photography, write concise but enticing descriptions, and group items logically so customers can make quick decisions.
Many operators also create "delivery-friendly" menus by highlighting dishes that travel well and maintain their quality after 30 or 40 minutes in transit. Crispy fried foods that become soggy may be replaced with grilled alternatives or packaged differently to improve customer satisfaction.
Here, packaging becomes key to the experience and can even impact how a meal is prepared. The crisp character of fried foods is better preserved in foil containers. Pasta being sent on a 30- to 40-minute delivery run in a sealed container should be cooked al dente because the food will continue to cook in transit. If a customer receives a dish that was cooked optimally at the restaurant but arrives overcooked, his or her opinion of the dish and by extension, the restaurant, is likely to be adversely affected.
Digital menu engineering also involves pricing strategy. Meal bundles, family packs, combo meals and limited time offers are particularly effective on delivery apps because customers can compare value with just a few taps.
How AI Is Becoming the New Menu Consultant
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable tools in menu engineering.
Instead of relying solely on intuition, restaurants can now analyze thousands of transactions in minutes. AI identifies patterns that humans might not notice – or would take a much longer timeframe to recognize.
For example, without a person having to perform a menu engineering analysis of contribution margin, AI can determine various analytical indicators such as:
- Which dishes generate the highest profit margins;
- Which items are frequently ordered together;
- Which menu descriptions lead to higher sales;
- Which dishes perform better on weekends vs. weekdays;
- Which items should be promoted during lunch or dinner service; and
- How menu items are performing and which menu offerings need improvement or removal.
Significantly, AI goes beyond traditional approaches to selling dishes as Paul Riedel, Starbucks’ senior vice president of digital and loyalty explained: “Over the past year, one thing has become clear: Customers aren’t always starting with a menu,” Riedel asserted in a press statement. “They’re starting with a feeling .... We wanted to meet customers right in that moment of inspiration and make it easier than ever to find a drink that fits." (Gen Z clientele take note.)
For anxious restaurant managers, AI provides an opportunity rather than a threat by providing more timely and detailed information to support management decision-making.
Dynamic Menus That Change Throughout the Day
One of the biggest advantages of digital menus is flexibility. Instead of displaying the same menu all day, restaurants can automatically adjust offerings based on the time of day, weather, inventory levels or customer demand.
A café might promote iced drinks during a heatwave while a neighborhood restaurant may feature soups and comfort foods on cold evenings. There is nothing revolutionary in this in the sense that cafés and restaurants regularly make such menu adjustments. However, digital platforms allow such modifications to be done far more quickly and seamlessly.
If fresh seafood is selling quickly, the menu can remove the item once stock runs low rather than disappointing customers later. Likewise, dishes nearing ingredient expiry can be promoted with limited time offers to reduce food waste.
Such real-time menu management has required a far higher level of monitoring and effort before menus went digital.
Smarter Upselling Without the Pressure
Digital ordering has also changed the way restaurants suggest additional purchases.
Rather than relying solely on staff to recommend desserts or drinks, apps can make intelligent suggestions during the ordering process. When wait staff upsell a product, it may be off-putting to customers. But it’s hard to get angry at the occasional promotion that comes up on one’s smartphone.
Typically, the upsells are logical. For instance, if one orders a burger and fries, the app might recommend a milkshake. Selecting pasta can lead to suggesting addition of a truffles or cheese, the option garlic bread, or a matching wine. As the meal is being built, dessert can appear before checkout.
These recommendations are increasingly powered by AI, which learns from the vast multitude of previous orders to identify combinations customers are genuinely likely to enjoy.
When executed with proficiency, these suggestions feel helpful rather than intrusive.
Better Data Leads to Better Decisions
Perhaps the greatest strength of digital menu engineering is quantifying customer behavior.
Every click, search, purchase and abandoned order prior to sale generates useful information. Restaurants can test different photos, descriptions or prices and quickly see which version performs better.
Instead of guessing what customers want, operators can rely on evidence. The constant flow of feedback allows menus to evolve continuously, responding to seasonal trends, changing customer preferences and shifting ingredient costs.
The Human Touch Still Matters in the Digital Age
Despite all the advances in AI and digital technology, successful menu engineering remains rooted in understanding people.
Customers still respond to beautiful gastronomical photography, enticing descriptions, familiar flavors, and intriguing stories, which combine to create an emotional connection. Technology simply provides quicker and more agile tools to deliver those experiences more effectively.
The restaurants that will thrive in 2026 are those that combine data-driven decision making with genuine hospitality. AI may decide which dish appears first on the screen, but it's still detectible food, memorable service, and authentic narrative that keep customers coming back.
The menu may now live on a smartphone, but its purpose remains the same: to tempt, delight and persuade customers to make choices that are right for them and the operator. Now this can occur one tap at a time.