Calculate profitability by platform: the step-by-step method to identify your champions and your dead weight.

Profit per dish (or food cost per recipe) is the fundamental calculation that every restaurateur should master. Yet, less than 30% of independent restaurateurs perform this calculation systematically. The result: menus that contain unprofitable dishes without the owner being aware of it, popular dishes that don’t generate a margin, and menu decisions based on intuition rather than figures.

The basic calculation is simple: Cost of raw materials / Selling price (excluding tax) = Food cost ratio. The goal in classic restaurants is a food cost below 30-35%. In fast food and delivery, the target is rather 25-28% to take into account platform commissions. Example: a burger sold for €14 excluding tax with a cost of ingredients of €4.20 has a food cost of 30%. If this same burger is sold via Uber Eats with a 30% commission, the restaurant only receives €9.80, and the actual food cost rises to 4.20/9.80 = 42.8%. This burger is unprofitable through the platform.

The Boston Matrix (or menu engineering matrix) classifies your dishes into 4 categories. The Stars: high popularity + high profitability. These are your flagship dishes to promote everywhere. The Milk Cows: high popularity + low profitability. These dishes generate volume but little margin; you need to either increase their price or reduce their cost. The Question Marks: low popularity + high profitability. These dishes deserve to be better promoted or better photographed. The Dead Weights: low popularity + low profitability. These dishes must be removed from the menu.

To build this matrix, you need two data points per dish: the number of times sold over a period (popularity) and the profit generated per sale (profitability). Delivery platforms provide the number of sales. The profit requires the calculation of the actual food cost. In a spreadsheet, create 4 columns: Dish Name, Sales in 30 days, Ingredient Cost, Profit per sale. Calculate the average popularity and profit, then classify each dish as being above or below these averages.

Actions to take according to category:

• Stars -> Maintain quality, do not change the price, put in the first position in the menu.
• Dairy Cows -> Increase the price by 1-2 euros (regular customers may not necessarily notice) or reduce costs (portion, substitute ingredient).
• Question Marks -> Work on the photo, description, and featured section in the menu, cross-selling suggestions.
• Dead Weight -> Remove from the menu or radically modify (new name, new recipe, new positioning).

Here’s a practical tip: do this exercise once per quarter. Raw material costs fluctuate, customer trends evolve, and your “Stars” from yesterday can become “Milk Cows” if you don’t adjust your prices accordingly. Restaurateurs who regularly audit their menus are the ones who maintain healthy margins in the long term, regardless of platform commission fluctuations.