Optimizing Your Restaurant Menu Without Drowning: Where to Start?

Between intuition, constraints, and data: the restaurateur’s puzzle

Every season, it’s the same story.

You want to refresh your restaurant’s menu, follow trends, and improve your margins… but where do you start?

Between rising costs, must-have dishes, and new items to test, optimizing your menu can quickly become a real headache.

Good news: there’s a simple way to regain control — without getting lost in the numbers.

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1. Start with an accurate picture of your current restaurant menu

Before changing anything, you need to know where you stand.

Which dishes sell the most? Which are the most profitable? Which take up space without adding value?

👉 What you need: A clear view of your sales, margins, and product mix.

That’s the foundation for spotting inconsistencies: a very popular but low-margin dish, a forgotten dessert, or a poorly positioned price.

With Fyre’s dashboard, this snapshot is generated automatically:

• sales and margins by product,

• margin ratio,

• average ticket,

• performance by day and meal period.

Once you have this overview, you’ll know where to take action first.

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2. Classify your products: stars, cash cows, dilemmas, and dead weight

Not every dish plays the same role on your menu.

Some attract customers, others generate profit, and some just take up space.

That’s where the BCG matrix (popularized by Fyre) becomes invaluable:

Category	Role on the menu	Recommended action
Stars	Best sellers + high margin	Highlight and promote them
Cash Cows	Steady sales + good profitability	Keep them, but monitor costs
Dilemmas	Low sales + high margin	Test better visibility
Dead Weight	Low sales + low margin	Remove or rework them

The goal is to refocus your offer on what truly drives profit — without sacrificing variety.

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3. Streamline without weakening your offer

Too much choice kills choice.

A streamlined menu means less inventory, less waste, and better clarity for the customer.

But reducing doesn’t mean downgrading.

It’s about clarifying your offer: keeping your signature items, removing duplicates, and making sure every dish aligns with your positioning.

💡 Fyre Tip: Compare your products along two axes — sales volume and unit margin.

You’ll quickly identify which dishes boost profitability… and which drag it down.

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4. Adjust your prices intelligently

This is often the most sensitive step: increasing prices without scaring off customers.

But it’s not about raising prices everywhere — it’s about optimizing perceived value.

👉 Check:

• Price range consistency (are your prices coherent with one another?)

• Target margin ratio (>3 recommended for a profitable dish)

• Entry-point products that can offset an increase elsewhere

With Fyre’s price analysis, you can visualize price gaps at a glance and simulate different scenarios to keep the right balance between attractiveness and profitability.

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5. Test, measure, adjust

A menu is a living organism.

What works in March may not work in September.

The key is to track your key metrics: average ticket, category sales, performance of new items, pricing impact…

And to adjust continuously rather than waiting for the next season.

💡 With FyrePulse, you can compare your own trends with market benchmarks (e.g., +15% in vegetarian dishes this quarter, or a drop in premium soft drinks at dinner).

This helps you decide when to adapt your offer — without losing sight of profitability.

Optimizing your menu isn’t about rewriting everything — it’s about getting back to the essentials.

• Identify what truly creates value,

• Simplify what clutters clarity,

• Adjust prices with precision,

• And manage performance through data.

  
  

With Fyre, restaurateurs take back control of their menus — no spreadsheets, no headaches.

Because a well-designed menu means profitability regained.