Sort Your Menu into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs with Gemini in Google Sheets

What This Does

Your POS knows how many of each dish you sold. Your chef's recipe costing knows what each dish costs to make. Gemini in Google Sheets can combine the two into one table and sort every item into the classic menu engineering groups, so you can see which dishes to reprice, rework or drop before you touch the menu.

Before You Start

• You have a Google Workspace account with Gemini included (Business Standard, $14/user/month). Open a Google Sheet and look for an Ask Gemini button at the top right. If it is missing, ask whoever manages your Google account whether Gemini is turned on for you
• You have an item sales export from your POS for a period you trust, such as the last full quarter. Most POS systems export to a spreadsheet file, and the report is usually named something like item sales or product mix
• You have each item's cost per plate from your chef's recipe costing
• You know that dish costs and prices can be sensitive. Keep this sheet in your own Drive, share it only with your chef, and leave out supplier names and anything with an account number

The Four Groups in Plain Words

Compare each item to two averages across your whole menu: units sold and margin per item (price minus cost).

• Star: sells above the average and earns above the average margin. Protect it.
• Plowhorse: sells above the average but earns below the average margin. Popular, so look at the price or the portion.
• Puzzle: sells below the average but earns above the average margin. Good money per plate, so look at where it sits on the menu and how servers describe it.
• Dog: sells below the average and earns below the average margin. A candidate to rework or cut.

Steps

1. Build the input sheet

Open a new Google Sheet. Make one row per menu item with these columns: Item, Units Sold, Price, Cost Per Plate. Paste in your POS export and your chef's costs. If your POS gave you an Excel file, open it in Google Sheets and choose File, then Save as Google Sheets, because Google says Gemini works best with native Google Sheets files.

2. Open Gemini

At the top right of the sheet, click Ask Gemini. A side panel opens with suggested prompts and a prompt box at the bottom.

3. Ask for the margin column and the averages

Type: "Add a Margin column that is Price minus Cost Per Plate for each item. Then tell me the average Units Sold and the average Margin across all items." Review what Gemini proposes, then click Insert or apply the action it shows. If it adds the wrong thing, click Undo and rephrase.

4. Ask for the groups

Type: "Add a Group column. Label each item Star if Units Sold is above the average and Margin is above the average. Label it Plowhorse if Units Sold is above the average and Margin is below the average. Label it Puzzle if Units Sold is below the average and Margin is above the average. Label it Dog if both are below. Show me the formula you used."

5. Verify three items by hand

Do not skip this. Pick three items, ideally one you expected to be a star, one you expected to be a dog and one surprise. For each, look at its Units Sold and Margin, compare them to the two averages in your sheet, and decide the group yourself. If your answer differs from Gemini's label for any of the three, the formula is wrong. Click Show code or read the formula, fix the comparison, and check the three items again. Also confirm that the average Gemini reported matches what you get from a plain AVERAGE formula on the column.

6. Decide, then talk to the chef

Ask: "Which items should I reprice, rework or consider cutting, and what questions should I ask my chef about each?" Treat the answer as a list of questions. Before you cut anything, check it with your chef, who knows about prep sharing, ingredient overlap, guest favorites and how an item supports the rest of the menu.

Real Example

Scenario: You run a 60-seat bistro and want to know where a price change would matter. These numbers are invented round figures for illustration, with margin in plain units.

What you type: The prompts in steps 3 and 4.

What you get: The average Units Sold is about 157 (940 divided by 6) and the average margin is about 7.7 (46 divided by 6). Burger and Tomato soup sell above 157 but earn below 7.7, so they are plowhorses. Salmon and Octopus earn above 7.7 but sell below 157, so they are puzzles. Pasta is above both averages, so it is a star. Side salad is below both, so it is a dog. A sensible next step is a question, not a cut: could the burger take a small price move, and could servers mention the salmon more? The side salad may still be there because guests expect it, which is a question for your chef.

Tips

• Averages shift when your item list changes. Keep seasonal items, new items and anything on the menu for only part of the period out of the first pass, or note them.
• Some owners weight the average by units sold instead of using a simple average of items. Either works if you use the same method each time you rerun the analysis. Ask your accountant which they prefer.
• Compare against your own earlier quarters, not against rules of thumb from elsewhere. Your concept and city set what a healthy margin looks like.
• Gemini keeps its conversation history only while the sheet stays open, so click Insert on anything you want to keep.

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