Uncovering Menu Pairings: The Market Basket Report 🛒🍔
While standard financial summaries tell you what sold and how much, they rarely explain the buying behavior behind those numbers. The Market Basket Report flips the perspective on your product mix by answering one core question: "When customers order this add-on or modifier, what main items are they ordering it with?"
Unlike a traditional Product Mix report that looks at items in isolation, the Market Basket Report focuses on your modifiers, sides, and add-ons, revealing exactly how different elements of your menu interact in practice.
📊 What You'll See on the Report
The report breaks down your sales data by focusing on the accessory items first, then nesting their companion items underneath.
Sales Category Grouping: Results are organized by the sales category of the add-on item (e.g., Sides, Add-Ons, Condiments).
The Add-On Baseline: Within each category, every add-on item is listed with its total order count and gross sales.
Nested Parent Rankings: Nested directly beneath that add-on are the parent items it was rang with, automatically ranked from most to least frequent.
📝 Report Example
🛠️ Strategic Ways to Use This Data
Analyzing these cross-item relationships gives you a distinct advantage when optimizing your operations:
Menu Engineering & Layout: Identify which add-ons are strongly anchored to specific mains. If a high-margin side like Truffle Fries is almost always paired with your Wagyu Burger, that exact pairing is worth highlighting with a dedicated callout box on your physical or digital menu layouts.
Targeted Upsell Training: Use high-frequency pairings to drive staff behavior. If the data shows a specific dipping sauce is ordered 80% of the time with your chicken tenders, train your service team to prompt for it explicitly ("Would you like to add our signature hot honey sauce with those tenders?").
Bundling & Promotions: High-frequency pairings are natural candidates for combo deals, happy hour packages, or automated cross-selling prompts on your Online Ordering subdomain.
Smart Pricing Decisions: If a low-cost add-on is overwhelmingly tied to a luxury, high-margin main item, its perceived value to the guest is incredibly high—meaning you have room to adjust its standalone price upward without impacting volume.
Menu Simplification: If a specific modifier or specialized ingredient is only occasionally paired with one or two obscure items, it might not justify taking up space across your global POS layout. You can restrict its availability or archive it to keep inventory streamlined.
🔍 Filters Available
To help you isolate specific buying habits, the Market Basket Report can be refined using several dynamic filters in the NX Portal:
| Filter Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Sales Categories | Limit results to add-on items within specific categories (e.g., viewing only Appetizer Add-ons). |
| Specific Items | Focus purely on one or more add-on items by name to see their parent item distribution. |
| Order Type | Compare pairing behaviors across different fulfillment methods like Dine In, Takeout, or Online Ordering. |
| Revenue Center | Isolate results to specific areas of your operation (e.g., comparing Bar tab patterns vs. Main Dining Room tables). |
| Employee | See pairings specific to an individual server's orders—perfect for identifying your top-performing upsellers. |
Need Help? 💡
Why are the gross sales showing as $0.00 for some nested items in my report?
If an add-on is included in the base price of a meal (such as a default side of fries that comes with a burger), its individual gross revenue will register as $0.00. The report still tracks the Times Ordered metric perfectly so you don't lose track of your kitchen's inventory throughput.
Can I run this report across multiple business dates?
Yes! You can set custom date ranges in the portal to compare seasonal pairing trends, such as analyzing if summer beverage add-ons differ from winter patterns.
Still fine-tuning your menu performance matrix?
Reach out to your local NX Partner to learn how you can use NX to make informed menu matrix decisions.