Menu engineering classifies items into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs based on which two metrics?

• A. Sales frequency and gross profit per item
• B. Preparation time and customer satisfaction
• C. Inventory turnover and portion size
• D. Ingredient cost and supplier lead time

Answer: (A)

Menu engineering evaluates each menu item using two key measures: how often the item is sold (sales frequency) and how much gross profit it generates per item. By plotting items on a grid defined by high or low sales and high or low profitability, you categorize them into Stars (high sales, high profit), Plowhorses (high sales, low profit), Puzzles (low sales, high profit), and Dogs (low sales, low profit). This helps managers decide where to promote or modify offerings. The other factors listed in the distractors, like preparation time, customer satisfaction, inventory turnover, portion size, ingredient cost, or supplier lead time, influence operations or costs but aren’t the two axes used to classify items in this framework.