How Do I Read My Menu Engineering Dashboard?

Menu Engineering scores every item on your menu across financial and environmental performance, so you can see at a glance which dishes are working hard for your business and which might need a second look.

Financial Performance

Popularity
What it measures: How frequently an item sells relative to other items on your menu.
Why it matters: A low-popularity item isn't automatically a problem, but paired with low profitability, it's a strong candidate for removal or repositioning.

Profitability
What it measures: How much margin an item generates.
Why it matters: Revenue alone can be misleading, a popular item with thin margins may contribute less to your bottom line than a less popular, high-margin one.

Financial Performance Rating (Excellent / Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory / Replace)
What it measures: A combined score based on an item's Popularity and Profitability together.
Why it matters: Gives you a fast, at-a-glance verdict instead of having to cross-reference two separate numbers for every item, "Excellent" items are your stars, "Replace" items are actively worth reconsidering.

Environmental Performance

Environmental Performance Rating (Excellent / Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory / Replace)
What it measures: A combined score based on an item's Carbon Footprint, Water Footprint, Land Use, and Energy Resources impact.
Why it matters: Lets you factor sustainability into menu decisions with the same clarity as financial performance, useful if you're working to reduce environmental impact without guessing which items matter most.

Performance Radar (Energy Efficiency, CO2 Performance, Land Use Reduction, H2O Performance)
What it measures: A visual breakdown of an item's environmental performance across all four impact categories at once.
Why it matters: Shows you not just whether an item scores well overall, but exactly which impact category is dragging it down, useful when deciding whether a recipe tweak (e.g., swapping one ingredient) could meaningfully improve its score.