Menu Item Margin Review Worksheet

Once every item has an honest plate cost and a price, the menu becomes a dataset. This worksheet puts that dataset on one page. For each item, enter the current plate cost from the recipe card, the pre-tax menu price, and the number of units sold over a representative period from your point of sale, a full month at minimum. Food cost percentage is plate cost divided by price; gross profit per plate is price minus plate cost. The last column is where you sort each item into one of four rough groups: high margin and high volume (protect), high margin and low volume (promote), low margin and high volume (re-cost, re-portion, or reprice), and low margin and low volume (rework or cut).

The sheet only tells the truth if the plate costs are current, so run the Recipe Card Costing Checklist on any card that looks stale before you fill in a row. The example row at the top uses illustrative round numbers so you can see how the columns relate; replace it with your own items. The article at /blog/find-menu-margin-losers/ goes deeper on how to read the results, and the calculator at /tools/plate-cost-menu-price/ will give you the plate cost and price columns for any single item. Repeat the exercise each quarter, or sooner when a key ingredient moves in price, because the sales mix shifts with the seasons and so do the quadrants.