A fuzzy multi-criteria decision making model for menu engineering

Menu remains a key element in influencing the success of restaurants which is very dynamic and highly competitive with a high failure rate within the first three years of operation. Menu engineering refers to the specific techniques used to evaluate performance of individual menu items leading to strategic decision. Many influencing elements are consolidated to two elements of popularity index and contribution margin providing four different combinations that can be used to choose decision options. Decision makers carry out menu engineering against manually set target values which are imprecise and choice of strategic options becomes erroneous and tedious. As a step toward providing a more powerful decision making tool this study presents a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making model to choose strategy decision options that extends the set of combinations from four to nine. The model uses trapezoidal fuzzy numbers for normalization and linguistic variables for fuzzification. The applicability of the model is tested using thirty menu items in four categories.