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Menu Engineering Score Calculator

Work out menu engineering score instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Menu Engineering Score Calculator

Menu engineering plots each dish on popularity and contribution margin against category averages, producing four quadrants. The 70% popularity rule is standard: an item is popular if its share exceeds 70% of the expected equal share, which allows for menus with many items.

Formulas

Popularity index

Popularity index = Item share / (Average share x 0.70)

Contribution margin index

CM index = Item contribution margin / Category average contribution margin

Worked example

With the default values below, Menu Engineering Score Calculator returns Menu engineering classification of Star — promote and protect. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Item's share of category sales
14
Average share across the category
10
Item contribution margin
320
Average contribution margin in the category
280

Results

Menu engineering classification
Star — promote and protect
Popularity index
2.000
Contribution margin index
1.143
Margin against the category average
$40.00

Step by step

  1. 1Values used
  2. 2Popularity index
  3. 3Contribution margin index
  4. 4Menu engineering classification= Star — promote and protect
  5. 5Popularity index= 2.000
  6. 6Contribution margin index= 1.143
  7. 7Margin against the category average= 40.00

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 3 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why 70% of the average share?

Because on a menu of twenty items, expecting every item to hit the full 5% average is unrealistic. The 70% threshold identifies genuinely underperforming items.

What do I do with a puzzle?

Reposition it on the menu, rename it more appealingly, or have staff recommend it. High margin with low sales is the easiest quadrant to fix.

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