profit··7 min read
Menu engineering: which items to push, keep, cut or fix
The classic menu-engineering matrix applied to food-truck menus, with what to do about each quadrant.
Every menu has stars, workhorses, puzzles and dogs. Here's how to spot them and what to do about each.
Stars: high margin, high volume
Push these. Make them impossible to miss on the menu. Every truck should have 2-3 stars driving the business.
Workhorses: low margin, high volume
Keep, but try to fix. Can you reduce the food cost or add a small upsell?
Puzzles: high margin, low volume
Rework the description, reposition on the menu, or add a photo. The margin is there — the demand isn't yet.
Dogs: low margin, low volume
Cut. Every dog on a menu clutters the choice and delays the queue.
Where to get the data
CartFlow's product-profitability view sorts your menu into these quadrants automatically once you're logging sales and recipe costs.