Sales Increasing Strategies Based on Menu Item Performance: Case of a Luxury Restaurant

Abstract

As one of the food and beverage cost control tools in the restaurant industry, menus can inform service providers about the restaurant's performance and assist them in developing sustainable sales-increasing strategies through appropriate analysis techniques. Since menu item activities have an important role in the profitability of the restaurant, the goal of the current study is to determine these activities through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and to propose sustainable sales enhancing strategies according to menu management stages. Accordingly, data of 166 menu items in 6 food groups (soups, appetizers and salads, hot starters, pan dishes and main courses, rice and pasta, desserts) in the menu of a luxury restaurant for December 2020 operating in Antalya were included in DEA. Performance of the menu items in six different food groups in the menu was analyzed by determining selling price, fixed costs and variable costs as input variables, while popularity and gross profit are used as output ones. Results imply that the most efficient food group was soups, while pan and main dishes were those with the lowest activity levels. Following the study results, the strategies to be considered in increasing the menu performance according to the menu management stages depending on the menu item efficiency were proposed. Paper concludes with some useful recommendations to the service providers and practitioners.