Imagine Collective

The Challenge

A multi-site café group engaged Imagine Collective to review menu performance across seven venues and identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency, reduce menu complexity and address potential food waste.

The business operated an extensive food and beverage offering, with hundreds of individual products available across its network.

While the broad menu provided customers with choice, the business lacked a clear network-wide understanding of which products were generating consistent sales and which were creating unnecessary operational complexity.

Every menu item required consideration of ingredient purchasing, stock management, preparation, staff training and kitchen capacity. Slow-moving products also presented potential food waste risks, particularly within the fresh bakery offering.

The challenge was to identify where the business could simplify its operations and improve commercial performance without compromising customer choice or removing products that served a strategic purpose.

Our Approach

Imagine Collective undertook a comprehensive menu engineering and sales performance analysis using four consecutive weeks of point-of-sale data across all seven venues.

The review covered 320 individual menu items and 19,834 units sold, with products consolidated across takeaway, dine-in and other variations to establish a consistent view of sales performance.

We assessed product sales velocity, categorised menu items and identified which products were contributing to overall sales volume compared with those generating minimal customer demand.

Our analysis extended beyond simply identifying slow-moving products. We separated core kitchen menu items from bakery products, beverages, retail lines and grab-and-go offerings to ensure each category was assessed according to its operational and commercial purpose.

This allowed us to prioritise genuine opportunities for menu optimisation while recognising that certain lower-volume products could still provide value to the business.

We developed a targeted review framework to support management decisions around menu simplification, bakery production quantities, inventory management and future menu development.

A Critical Opportunity Identified

Our analysis revealed that 191 of the 320 menu items, representing approximately 60% of the total offering, averaged fewer than seven sales per week across the entire seven-venue network.

Despite representing the majority of products, these items contributed just 10.6% of total sales volume.

In contrast, just 27 high-performing products accounted for 56.6% of all units sold, demonstrating a significant concentration of customer demand within a relatively small portion of the menu.

The review identified 47 standing kitchen menu items requiring further commercial assessment, together with 37 of 45 bakery products that were recording low sales volumes.

The bakery category presented a particularly important opportunity. With more than 82% of bakery products classified as slow-moving, the business had a clear reason to review purchasing and production quantities to reduce potential daily waste.

Imagine Collective provided a structured set of recommendations to guide management through product reviews, menu consolidation, bakery stock adjustments and ongoing performance monitoring.

Importantly, the recommendations recognised that low sales alone should not determine whether a product remains on the menu. Profit margins, operational requirements and customer needs would also need to inform final decisions.

The engagement gave the business a clear, data-driven understanding of menu performance across its network and identified practical opportunities to reduce complexity, improve inventory management and strengthen future commercial decision-making.

Rather than relying on assumptions about popular products, the business gained a framework for evaluating its menu based on actual customer purchasing behaviour and operational considerations.