Tool 05 · Chapter 3 — The 80/20

Menu / SKU Pareto.

Eighty percent of your revenue comes from twenty percent of your menu. Most owners never know which 20 — or worse, never cut the bottom 20. Drop in your last 30 days; see the cut list.

Paste your items

One per line: item name, last-30-day units sold, sale price. Comma or tab separated. Excel paste works.

Format: name, qty, price — one per line. Use commas or tabs (paste-from-Excel works).
Top 20% drives
—
— items
Bottom 20% drives
—
— items
Total revenue
—
last 30 days · — items

Pareto curve

Bars = revenue per item, descending. Line = cumulative % of total revenue. The 80% line is where you stop subsidizing dead weight.

The list — what to keep, what to kill

ItemQtyPriceRevenueShareVerdict
From the book — chapter 3 "Every dead item on your menu costs you twice: once in the inventory you wrote off, and once in the customer decision-fatigue that pushed a high-margin order toward an easy one. The discipline isn't adding — it's cutting."

Want the cut-list worksheet + cost-of-complexity calculator?

Both ship with the launch kit, July 22.