Restaurants spent decades guessing which dishes to promote. Menu engineering made it a discipline; digital menus made it testable. Here’s the classic playbook, updated for screens.<\/p>\n
Classic menu engineering sorts dishes by popularity and margin: stars<\/strong> (popular, profitable \u2014 promote them), plowhorses<\/strong> (popular, thin margin \u2014 reprice or re-portion), puzzles<\/strong> (profitable, ignored \u2014 rename, photograph, reposition), and dogs<\/strong> (neither \u2014 let them go). On paper this took quarterly analysis; a digital menu shows you the data continuously.<\/p>\n Eyes land first on a list’s opening items and remember the last \u2014 bury the plowhorse mid-list, open sections with stars. On a phone screen, “first” means before the scroll: your best margins belong in the opening viewport.<\/p>\n Dropping currency symbols (“245” not “245 K\u010d”) measurably softens price pain. Decoy anchoring works too: the premium steak nobody orders makes the second-priciest feel reasonable \u2014 its job is to be seen, not sold.<\/p>\n Photographing everything flattens the menu; photographing your stars and puzzles points appetite where margin lives. Pair it with descriptions that sell provenance \u2014 “farm” and “grilled over oak” outsell adjectives like “delicious” every time.<\/p>\n Digital menus like ProMenu.cz<\/a> make every one of these testable weekly instead of yearly. Ask us to engineer your menu<\/a> \u2014 the data is already in your orders.<\/p>\n Sorting dishes by popularity and margin \u2014 stars, plowhorses, puzzles, dogs \u2014 and designing the menu to promote the profitable ones.<\/p> <\/div> Yes \u2014 prices without currency symbols measurably soften price pain; it is one of the oldest verified menu tricks.<\/p> <\/div> Where eyes land first \u2014 section openings, and on phones the first viewport before any scrolling.<\/p> <\/div> No \u2014 photograph stars and puzzles; photographing everything flattens attention instead of directing it.<\/p> <\/div> A premium item priced to make the next tier feel reasonable \u2014 its job is to be seen, not ordered.<\/p> <\/div> The data is continuous \u2014 you can test names, photos and positions weekly instead of guessing quarterly.<\/p> <\/div> <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stars, plowhorses and the magic of removing currency signs: classic menu engineering, updated for digital menus where you can actually test it.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_canonical_url":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-124","description-off"],"yoast_head":"\nPosition is persuasion<\/h2>\n
The small print that moves money<\/h2>\n
Photos: selective, not total<\/h2>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n