Think of your menu like a sports team where the star players aren't scoring points. You've got dishes flying out of the kitchen, but they're draining your profits instead of boosting them. The solution isn't benching these crowd favorites—it's coaching them to perform better financially.
Analyze your current situation
Map out your most popular dishes and their actual profitability. This reveals exactly where your biggest opportunities hide.
💡 Example:
Restaurant De Smaak analyzes their top 5 dishes:
- Steak (40 sold/week): food cost 38% - too high
- Salmon (35 sold/week): food cost 28% - solid
- Pasta carbonara (50 sold/week): food cost 42% - disaster
- Chicken fillet (30 sold/week): food cost 25% - excellent
- Vegetarian curry (20 sold/week): food cost 22% - very good
Reality check: Their two most popular dishes are profit killers.
Calculate the real impact
Figure out exactly how much money you're losing on popular but unprofitable dishes. Numbers make the problem impossible to ignore.
⚠️ Note:
A popular dish with terrible margins bleeds more cash than an unpopular dish with the same problem. Attack your bestsellers first.
Use this formula to calculate annual impact:
Extra profit per year = (Current food cost% - Target food cost%) × Sales price excl. VAT × Annual units sold
💡 Example calculation:
Pasta carbonara: €18.50 incl. VAT = €16.97 excl. VAT
- Current food cost: 42%
- Target food cost: 30%
- Gap: 12 percentage points
- Volume: 50 per week × 50 weeks = 2,500 annually
Potential gain: 0.12 × €16.97 × 2,500 = €5,091 yearly
Adjust your popular dishes
You've got three levers to pull: increase prices, cut costs, or do both strategically.
- Bump the price: Usually the fastest fix for crowd favorites
- Right-size portions: Smaller servings at current prices
- Swap ingredients: Cheaper alternatives that don't sacrifice quality
- Tweak recipes: Less expensive stuff, more affordable fillers
Test price increases carefully
Start with modest price bumps on your most beloved dishes. From years of working in professional kitchens, I've seen customers accept higher prices more readily for items they already crave.
💡 Practical approach:
Bump pasta carbonara from €18.50 to €19.50:
- New price excl. VAT: €17.89
- Same ingredient costs: €7.13
- New food cost: (€7.13 / €17.89) × 100 = 39.9%
Outcome: Drop from 42% to 40% food cost with just €1 increase
Monitor the consequences
After making changes, track sales volume closely. A slight dip in orders might be worth it if your margins improve substantially.
⚠️ Note:
If sales plummet more than 15% after a price hike, consider rolling back and focusing on cost reduction instead.
Apply menu engineering principles
Give your profitable dishes prime real estate on your menu. Use anchor pricing and visual tricks to steer customers toward better margins.
- Stars: Popular and profitable - push these hard
- Workhorses: Popular but unprofitable - fix or hide them
- Puzzles: Profitable but ignored - boost their appeal
- Dogs: Neither popular nor profitable - consider the axe
How do you optimize your best dishes? (step by step)
List your top 10 best-selling dishes
Note how many you sell per week and calculate the food cost percentage of each dish. Focus on volume, not on gut feeling.
Identify the profit leaks
Mark all dishes with a food cost above 35%. Calculate how much extra profit you'd make if these were at 30%.
Start with one dish
Choose your best-selling dish with a bad margin. Test a price increase of €1-2 or adjust the recipe to save costs.
Monitor for 2-3 weeks
Track whether sales drop and whether your total profit on this dish increases. Adjust if it works, revert if it doesn't.
Repeat for other dishes
Adjust one dish per month. This prevents customers from noticing all price increases at once and gives you time to learn what works.
✨ Pro tip
Track food costs on your 7 bestselling dishes every 2 weeks. Keep them under 32% and you'll control roughly 75% of your profit optimization potential.
Calculate this yourself?
In the KitchenNmbrs app you can do this in just a few clicks. 7 days free, no credit card.
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Frequently asked questions
How much can I raise prices without scaring customers away?
Popular dishes typically handle 5-10% increases without major sales drops. Test with small €1-2 bumps and watch what happens.
What if my biggest seller is actually losing money?
That's your golden opportunity. A popular money-loser costs you the most cash right now, but fixing it delivers the biggest profit boost. Start there immediately.
Should I completely remove dishes with terrible margins?
Not right away. Try fixing the margins through pricing or cost adjustments first. Only remove dishes that sell poorly AND lose money after you've tried everything else.
📚 Sources consulted
- EU Verordening 852/2004 — Levensmiddelenhygiëne (2004) — Official source
- EU Verordening 853/2004 — Hygiënevoorschriften voor levensmiddelen van dierlijke oorsprong (2004) — Official source
- EU Verordening 1169/2011 — Voedselinformatie aan consumenten (2011) — Official source
- NVWA — Hygiënecode voor de horeca (2024) — Official source
- NVWA — Allergenen in voedsel (2024) — Official source
- Codex Alimentarius — International Food Standards (2024) — Official source
- FSA — Safer food, better business (HACCP) (2024) — Official source
- BVL — Lebensmittelhygiene (HACCP) (2024) — Official source
- Warenwetbesluit Bereiding en behandeling van levensmiddelen (2024) — Official source
- WHO — Foodborne diseases estimates (2024) — Official source
Food Standards Agency (FSA) — https://www.food.gov.uk
The HACCP standards shown in this application are for informational purposes only. KitchenNmbrs does not guarantee that displayed values are current or complete. Always consult the FSA or your local authority for the latest regulations.
Written by
Jeffrey Smit
Founder & CEO of KitchenNmbrs
Jeffrey Smit built KitchenNmbrs from 8 years of hands-on experience as kitchen manager at 1NUL8 Group in Rotterdam. His mission: give every restaurant owner control over food cost.
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