RetailPOS's 2026 guide to menu engineering in India says every dish should justify its place before a delivery listing goes live. It sorts dishes by profit and popularity, prices them after platform commission (a 30.6% food cost becomes 42.5% at 28% commission) and suggests cutting an 80-item menu to 35–45 items.
Sort the menu before launch
When a restaurant lists on Zomato or Swiggy for the first time, the temptation is to upload the entire dine-in menu and leave the platform to work out what sells. A 2026 guide to menu engineering in India from RetailPOS takes the opposite line: each dish should prove it deserves a spot before the listing goes live, and that sorting belongs before launch rather than after it.
Four groups, four actions
RetailPOS places each dish on a grid of profitability against popularity and gives each group its own treatment:
- Stars (high profit, high popularity): protect them, give them prominent placement and never discount them.
- Plowhorses (low profit, high popularity): raise the price or bring down the portion cost.
- Puzzles (high profit, low popularity): promote them harder, reposition them or give them a new name.
- Dogs (low profit, low popularity): take them off the menu or rework them completely.
On a new listing, every dish can go through this test at the start, instead of waiting for a review once the menu has been live for months.
Price after commission, not before
Food cost percentage is simple to work out: the ingredient cost of one serving divided by its selling price. For delivery, RetailPOS shows why the sum cannot end there. In its example, a butter chicken whose food cost is 30.6% on paper rises to 42.5% after a 28% platform commission is deducted.
Prices for a new listing therefore need to allow for commission from the first day, rather than the real margin only coming to light after a month of orders.
Photos matter for every dish
RetailPOS also notes that on Zomato and Swiggy, dishes that lack professional photography regularly do worse than dishes in the same category that have good food photos.
A shorter menu sells better
The guide's strongest advice for delivery is to take items away. It recommends trimming a full menu of 80 items to 35–45 carefully chosen ones, mainly the Stars and the best combos, which it says improves order accuracy and average order value. Within each category, the Stars should appear first.
It also suggests pairing main dishes with high-margin drinks, which run at a 12–15% food cost, and desserts, at 15–25%, to protect overall margin while raising the value of each order.
What this means for your restaurant
- Run every dish through the profit-versus-popularity grid before it goes on your listing, and drop or rework the low-profit, low-popularity dishes before launch.
- Work out food cost against what you actually receive after commission, not against the menu price.
- Launch with a tighter menu built around your Stars and strongest combos, with the Stars placed first in each category.
- Give each dish professional photos, and bundle drinks or desserts with mains to lift the value of each order.
Sources
- Restaurant Menu Engineering in India: How to Design a Menu That Increases Profit in 2026 — RetailPOS
This article summarises the reporting and guides listed above; the figures belong to those sources and are attributed in the text. Check anything that affects your business against your own platform agreements, payout statements and advisers.