Menu Engineering Calculator

Both sell well -- their Menu Mix % clears the popularity bar of 70% of an even per-item share. The difference is Contribution Margin. A Star's margin meets or beats the Avg CM figure you entered for the rest of the menu, so every sale pulls its weight. A Plow Horse sells just as often but at a thinner margin, so volume is carrying an item that isn't paying for itself as well as the menu average.

Expected Mix is 100 divided by Total Menu Items -- the popularity share an item would get if every item sold in exactly equal proportion. A 25-item menu gives each item a 4% expected share. Actual Menu Mix % only needs to reach 70% of that figure (2.8% on a 25-item menu) to count as popular, since real menus never sell perfectly evenly and a strict 100%-of-average bar would flag almost everything as underperforming.

It raises Contribution Margin directly, since margin is Menu Price minus Food Cost, but the calculator does not model how a higher price changes how often guests order the dish. A price increase that pushes an item toward Star status on paper could just as easily cut Quantity Sold enough to also hurt its popularity score -- that demand response has to be judged separately, not read off this tool.

It sets the popularity bar through Expected Mix, which is 100% split evenly across every item on the menu. A 10-item menu sets a much higher bar per item (10% expected share) than a 60-item menu (1.7%), so the same Menu Mix % can read as Star- level popular on a large menu and merely average on a small one. Enter your real total item count, not just the items you're actively comparing.

Not automatically. A Dog clears neither the popularity nor the profitability bar, which is a strong signal to investigate, but this calculator only scores one item against the rest of the menu's average margin -- it doesn't know whether the dish anchors a combo, draws a loyal customer segment, or exists for menu-breadth reasons that don't show up in Contribution Margin or Menu Mix % alone.