Restaurant Analytics
How to Identify Your Best-Selling Dishes
To find your best-selling dishes, rank every dish over the same period by three numbers — how many were sold, how much revenue they brought in, and, if you know your costs, how much they earned after ingredients. The dishes near the top of all three lists are your real best sellers; a dish that tops only one list is a best seller of a particular kind, and deserves a different decision.
Best seller by which measure?
| Ranking | What it shows | What it can hide |
|---|---|---|
| Quantity sold | What guests choose most often | A cheap side that sells a lot but adds little |
| Revenue | Which dishes bring in the money | An expensive dish with a thin margin |
| Margin after ingredients | Which dishes actually earn | A dish few people order |
None of the three is wrong. They answer different questions, so decide which question you are asking before you change the menu.
Pick a fair window
- Use full weeks, so every weekday counts once; a list built on two weekends and one Monday is skewed.
- Leave out days that were not normal: a private event, a closure, a week a dish was sold out.
- Compare dishes that were on the menu for the whole window; a dish added last week cannot be judged against one that ran all month.
- Treat seasonal dishes and specials separately from the core menu.
Step by step
- Export or open your sales by dish for the last four complete weeks.
- Rank the dishes by quantity, then by revenue.
- If you have recipe costs, add the margin per dish and rank again.
- Mark the dishes that appear near the top of more than one list.
- Check the same lists by category: the best-selling dessert matters even if no dessert beats a main.
- Note the dishes guests look at but rarely order — they are the next question, not the answer.
Popular is not the same as profitable
A dish can lead the quantity list and still be one you would rather sell less of, if its ingredients cost almost as much as its price. Equally, a high-margin dish with modest sales may be your best candidate for a better spot on the menu. Sorting the whole menu by popularity and contribution is the job of menu engineering.
The next step: a practical guide to menu engineering.
What to do with a best seller
- Protect it: keep the recipe, the portion and the photo consistent, and keep it in stock.
- Give it a good position — at the top of its category, with a clear photo.
- Suggest something that goes with it, such as a drink or a side.
- Review its price with care; guests notice changes on the dish they order most.
- Use it as a reference when you write new dishes: what do guests like about it?
Common traps
- Counting only one channel: if part of your orders is taken outside your system, the ranking is incomplete.
- Mixing variants: a dish renamed halfway through the month can appear as two weaker dishes.
- Ignoring sold-out time: a dish that ran out early every evening may be more popular than its numbers say.
- Reacting to one good week.
Best sellers in Thmenu
In Thmenu, the analytics dashboard lists your top dishes by revenue with the quantity sold, and the share of revenue each category brings in. The Menu ABC Analysis ranks every dish by its share of revenue over the window you choose, and menu performance shows how often each dish was opened, added to the cart and ordered. Once recipes and ingredient costs are entered, the COGS & Margin Report shows the margin of each dish. Sales figures come from orders placed through Thmenu.