Operating question · Menu margin AI
The hero dish is often the weakest margin on the menu.
Before Service recomputes plate cost from live invoices, ranks every dish by contribution and volume, and flags the moves — re-price, re-cost, push, pull — that protect tomorrow's GP.
Focused output
IN REVIEWMargin risk brief
System generated — operator review required.
What it answers
POS reports tell you what sold. Not what was profitable.
Most operators learn the menu's real margin shape only at quarterly review — long after a 6% supplier increase has eaten the GP on the best-selling plate.
Best-seller is quietly running 38% GP, hadn't been re-priced in nine months.
Supplier price moved before the menu price did.
Sub-recipes still costed at last quarter's invoice.
Channel commissions distort effective margin off-prem.
Inputs
Signals used to prepare the brief
- Live plate cost from vendor invoices, not last quarter
- Contribution margin and menu engineering quadrants
- Channel-aware GP for off-prem and delivery mix
- Suggested re-price, re-cost, push or pull, with impact
Output artifact
Menu engineering that updates with every invoice.
- Live plate cost from vendor invoices, not last quarter
- Contribution margin and menu engineering quadrants
- Channel-aware GP for off-prem and delivery mix
Confidence + rationale
Readable evidence, not a black box
- Invoices, recipes, on-hand counts, sales mix, and recorded waste
- Confidence shown beside the recommendation
- Source signals stay available for review
Operator boundary
The system prepares the call. Your team confirms it.
Realistic pre-service scenario
A supplier increase puts pressure on one menu item. The brief shows the source and leaves the pricing call to the operator.
No automatic action. A human operator reviews every decision.
Service sequence
How an owner uses menu margin every Monday.
- Monday 07:00
Owner opens the menu margin board — quadrant view of all dishes.
- 07:10
Three dishes flagged with GP drift > 5pp from target.
- 07:20
Owner approves a $1.50 re-price on the workhorse and a re-cost on the puzzle.
- Tuesday
Print refreshes; new plate costs feed the prep plan.
- Following Monday
GP delta reported in the weekly Pre-Service Brief.
Connected workflows
Margin moves with prep, supply and channel.
Engineer the menu before the next print.
Import your menu, recipes and recent supplier invoices — your first margin board is ready in under 15 minutes.
FAQ
Questions operators actually ask.
No. Before Service sits on top of the POS, schedule and vendor invoices you already use. We turn that data into the daily decisions a POS won't tell you — what to prep, who to staff, what to re-price, what to 86.