There is a theory in our industry that has survived longer than most restaurant concepts.

It has outlasted the rise of the internet. It has outlasted the smartphone. It has outlasted QR code menus, third-party delivery apps, and the complete transformation of how people interact with food.

It is called menu engineering. And for 43 years, the restaurant industry has treated it like gospel.

If you have ever taken a hospitality course, attended a food show seminar, or read a single article on RestaurantOwner.com back in the day, you know the terms. Stars. Plowhorses. Puzzles. Dogs. You have been told where to place items on your menu. You have been told about sweet spots. You have been told that the upper right corner of a two-page menu is where customer eyes go first.

But here is the question nobody seems to ask.

Is any of this actually true?

So here’s where it all started!

Before menu engineering existed in our world, it was a corporate strategy tool. In 1968, Bruce Henderson at the Boston Consulting Group created the BCG Growth-Share Matrix. It helped Fortune 500 companies figure out which business units to invest in, which to milk for cash, and which to kill off.

The matrix had four categories: Stars, Cash Cows, Question Marks, and Dogs.

Sound familiar?

In 1982, two professors at Michigan State University took that corporate framework and applied it to restaurant menus. Michael L. Kasavana and Donald I. Smith published Menu Engineering: A Practical Guide to Menu Analysis. They swapped the corporate variables for restaurant ones: contribution margin (how much profit a dish generates) and popularity (how often it gets ordered).

They renamed the quadrants:

- Stars = High profit, high popularity. Promote and protect.
- Plowhorses = Low profit, high popularity. Guests love them but margins are thin.
- Puzzles = High profit, low popularity. Profitable but nobody orders them.
- Dogs = Low profit, low popularity. Cut them.

The core idea was simple. Not every menu item is equal. By plotting items on a two-axis chart, an operator could see their entire menu's performance at a glance.

Kasavana's most important contribution was shifting the industry away from food cost percentage as the primary measure. A dish with 40% food cost that sells for $35 puts $21 in your pocket. A dish with 20% food cost that sells for $12 puts $9.60 in your pocket. The dollar amount matters more than the percentage.

That insight alone was worth the whole model.

THE EYE TRACKING MYTH - No Way!

Separate from the math, a whole second layer of menu theory developed around how people look at menus. This is where things fall apart.

In the late 1970s, a graphic designer named William Doerfler published a "focal map" of menu reading. It appeared in a Cornell University quarterly. Doerfler suggested that when a customer opens a two-page menu, their eyes zigzag across the pages and land on a focal point just above the midpoint of the right-hand page.

This is the origin of the famous "sweet spot" theory.

Doerfler never provided scientific reasoning for why this area was the focal point. He was a graphic designer sharing his experience. But his focal map got cited everywhere. By textbooks. By the National Restaurant Association. By trade publications. By every menu consultant who ever sold a seminar.

For 30-plus years, one graphic designer's theory drove how menus were built across North America.

The only publicly available eye tracking study before the modern era was the 1987 NRA/Gallup study titled "Through the Eyes of the Customer." That study actually showed a book-like reading pattern. Left to right, top to bottom. Not the zigzag. But the zigzag was already embedded in the industry's DNA. The contradicting data got ignored.


THE STUDY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

In 2012, Dr. Sybil Yang at San Francisco State University published the most important challenge to the sweet spot theory. Yang had done her doctoral work at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and had already published the famous dollar sign study (menus without $ signs led to 8% higher spending).

Yang recruited test subjects, fitted them with infrared retinal eye scanners, and had them read a mock menu and order a meal. Published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.

Her findings:

1. People read menus like a book. Left to right. Top to bottom.
2. No evidence of a sweet spot. No area got more fixation time.
3. There was a "sour spot" where readers spent the least time (restaurant info and salads).
4. Average time on the menu was about 4 minutes. Reading speed indicated learning-focused reading, not scanning.
5. Customers pick an entree first, then build a meal around it.

Yang's take on the state of the industry's evidence:

"The restaurant industry has been piggybacking off past research. It's like a bad rumor that just kept perpetuating."

Walk into any food show in 2026 and you will still hear a menu consultant talk about the upper right corner. That is the power of a theory that gets repeated enough.



THE QR CODE PROBLEM

Even if the sweet spot theory had been true, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. The physical two-page menu is no longer the dominant format.

The numbers tell the story:

- 75% of full-service restaurants use QR code menus (2025)
- 78% of customers prefer QR menus over paper
- 94% of Gen Z guests prefer QR code menus
- 52% of Baby Boomers have adopted QR menus
- 100.2 million US smartphone users scanning QR codes

Every assumption about menu design, meaning where to place items, how to use visual cues, how to guide the eye, was built for a physical, two-page, printed menu.

When a guest scans a QR code and opens a menu on their phone, they are scrolling. There is no upper right corner. There is no diagonal focal area. There is no sweet spot. There is a thumb and a 6-inch screen.

The reading behavior is completely different. On a phone, the guest sees one category at a time. They scroll linearly. The "first and last" items in a list still get attention (that is the primacy and recency effect, which is legitimate psychology), but the spatial design principles of traditional menu engineering do not apply.



WHAT STILL WORKS. WHAT DOES NOT.

After looking at all the research, here is my honest assessment.

**STILL WORKS:**

- Contribution margin analysis. Knowing the dollar profit on every dish is basic financial literacy. Format-independent. Always relevant.
- The Stars/Plowhorses/Puzzles/Dogs framework. The categorization is sound. Plot your items. Know where they sit.
- Primacy and recency. First and last items in a list get more attention. Works on paper and digital.
- Descriptive menu language. Research consistently shows descriptive copy increases sales.
- Dollar sign removal. The Cornell study showed 8% higher spending without $ signs.

NEEDS TO BE RETIRED:

- The sweet spot theory. Debunked by Yang's 2012 eye tracking study.
- The Doerfler focal map. Based on one designer's experience in the 1970s. Never proven.
- The zigzag scan path. Both the Gallup study and Yang's study showed book-like reading.
- Static menu design rules for two-page layouts. In a QR code world, largely obsolete.
- Boxing items to increase sales. A 2003 study by Kincaid and Corsun found boxing did not significantly impact sales.



WHAT OPERATORS SHOULD DO IN 2026

**1. Keep the Matrix. Kill the Myths.**
Continue your contribution margin analysis. Stop making placement decisions based on sweet spots that have been debunked.

**2. Cost Fully.**
If you are only looking at food cost, you are getting an incomplete picture. Factor in prep labour. Factor in waste. Some of your Stars become Plowhorses when full costs are included.

**3. Build for the Phone First.**
If 94% of Gen Z prefers QR menus, think about how your menu works on a 6-inch screen before you worry about the printed version. Short category names. Compelling descriptions. Good photos. Highest-margin items at top and bottom of each list.

**4. Use Your Own Data.**
Stop relying on textbook benchmarks. Your POS system has your data. Digital menu platforms show click-through data. Use it.

**5. Test and Iterate.**
Menu engineering should not be a once-a-year exercise. Test changes monthly. Run A/B tests on descriptions. Rotate Puzzle items. Treat your menu like a living document.

**6. Account for Substitution.**
When you change the price or position of one item, it affects everything around it. Think about categories as competitive sets, not independent items.



Menu engineering is not dead. The financial framework Kasavana and Smith built in 1982 is still one of the best tools in the operator's toolkit.

But the design theory that got bolted onto that financial framework? Much of it was never proven in the first place. And the parts that might have had some validity for a printed two-page menu are being made irrelevant by the shift to digital.

The industry has a habit of holding onto theories long past their expiry date. We did it with food cost percentage as the primary metric. We did it with the sweet spot. We are doing it now with static menu design rules in a world where the menu lives on a phone.

The operators who will win in 2026 and beyond are the ones who keep the math, ditch the myths, and build their menus for the reality of how people actually read, order, and eat today.

Not how a graphic designer thought they did in 1978.

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

Jay Ashton | Canada's Restaurant Guy


**Sources cited in this report:** Kasavana & Smith, 1982 (Michigan State); BCG Growth-Share Matrix, Henderson 1968/1970; Doerfler focal map, 1978 (Cornell); NRA/Gallup eye tracking study, 1987; Yang, Kimes & Sessarego, dollar sign study, 2009 (Cornell); Yang, eye tracking study, 2012 (IJHM/SF State); Kincaid & Corsun, 2003; Linassi, Alberton & Marinho, ABC/ME study, 2016; Noone & Cachia, substitution study, 2020; Pavesic, cost-margin analysis, 1983; Miller, menu analysis matrix, 1980.
 

/