Daily Specials Planning and Menu Engineering Review
Plan specials from surplus and seasonal items, and review dish popularity versus margin to decide what to keep, reprice or drop.
Added October 15, 2026. Written with AI assistance and checked for clarity and placeholders; not reviewed by a lawyer, accountant, clinician or other professional. How these prompts are made
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Help me run a menu review and plan specials. Menu items with selling price, cost per portion and units sold last month: [MENU_DATA]. Surplus or seasonal ingredients available: [SURPLUS_INGREDIENTS]. Kitchen capacity (stations and skills): [KITCHEN_CAPACITY]. Customer feedback notes: [CUSTOMER_FEEDBACK]. Target food cost percentage: [TARGET_FOOD_COST_PERCENT]. First, calculate for every dish the gross profit per portion, food cost percentage and total contribution (profit times units sold), showing the arithmetic. Classify each dish by popularity (units sold compared with the average share) and profitability (profit per portion compared with the average) into four groups often called stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs, and explain the cut-offs you used. Present this in a table with the columns Dish, Price, Cost, Profit per portion, Units, Contribution, Popularity, Profitability, Class, Suggested action. Second, suggest five specials that use my surplus ingredients, each with a rough cost per portion estimate flagged as an assumption, the station it uses, and a price from my target percentage. Suggest ways to reposition puzzles and fix plowhorses, such as a better description or a small recipe tweak, as ideas to trial. Do not invent costs or sales. Treat the classification as a discussion tool, not a verdict. Allergen changes to any special must be checked and communicated under local rules [VERIFY]. Add a worked example with invented figures: 6 dishes with prices between 9 and 24 and units sold between 40 and 300.
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