Case Study: $4MM from One Change

Brand

Jack in the Box

Role

Director of Product

Scope

Digital Menu, iOS, Android

Focus

Revenue Optimization, Menu Architecture

Context

The mandate was simple: find
where revenue is being left behind.

Most optimization work starts with a hypothesis. This one started with a mandate. The team was tasked with identifying strategic gaps in the digital experience — places where the product was underperforming not because something was broken, but because something was invisible.

That distinction matters. Broken things get fixed. Invisible things get ignored — until someone is specifically asked to go looking. That's what this team did. And what they found didn't require a new feature, a redesign, or an engineering sprint. It required the willingness to look at the menu through a revenue lens and ask an uncomfortable question: are we showing guests the right things, in the right order, at the right moment?

The answer, in the case of Munchies Under $4, was no.

Challenge

A high-converting category
that guests had to go find.

Munchies Under $4 is exactly the kind of category that drives attachment. It's approachable, low-commitment, impulsive — the digital equivalent of the items by the register. In a physical location, that placement is deliberate. Operators know visibility drives attachment. Snack items at eye level sell. The same items tucked in the back do not.

The digital menu had the opposite problem. Munchies Under $4 was positioned where guests would encounter it only if they were actively browsing — not if they were on a direct path to checkout. The category wasn't failing because it wasn't compelling. It was failing because it was in the wrong place.

"The best revenue opportunities aren't always broken features. Sometimes they're the right product in the wrong position — and no one's been asked to look."

The challenge wasn't technical. It was organizational. Moving a menu category requires alignment across product, marketing, and operations. It requires someone to make the case with data — and the conviction to keep pushing until the change actually ships.

What We Did

Find the gap. Build the case.
Push until it ships.

The work happened in three stages: structured analysis, a clear recommendation, and the follow-through to get it across the line.

Analysis Mapped category performance against menu position — not just sales volume

Andrew Hannigan led the data analysis, pulling category-level performance across the digital ordering funnel. The question wasn't just "what sells?" — it was "what converts at a higher rate when guests actually see it?" Munchies Under $4 stood out: strong attachment rates when guests engaged with it, but limited exposure due to its position in the hierarchy. The opportunity wasn't speculative. It was sitting in the data.

Competitive Research Benchmarked how other brands structure value — and used it to make the case undeniable

Internal data alone rarely moves stakeholders. Andrew went further — researching how other major QSR and digital-first brands position value categories within their ordering experiences. The pattern was consistent: brands that gave value offerings prominent, early placement in the menu hierarchy drove higher attachment rates and larger average order values. It wasn't a novel idea. It was a proven one — and Jack in the Box wasn't doing it. That external validation, stacked on top of the internal performance data, made the recommendation harder to argue against and easier to approve.

Recommendation Made a specific, testable call — move the category down the hierarchy

The recommendation was precise: reposition Munchies Under $4 lower in the menu hierarchy, into a position where guests on the standard ordering path would naturally encounter it. Not a redesign. Not a new UI component. A position change — easy to implement, easy to measure. The team framed it as a testable hypothesis with a clear success metric: incremental attachment and order value.

Execution Pushed past the default to get the change shipped and measured

Changes to menu architecture aren't always welcome. There are stakeholders who've built opinions around category order, and the default posture is to leave things where they are absent compelling evidence. The team had the evidence — and the conviction to keep pushing. The change shipped. The results were immediate and unambiguous: $11,000 in incremental sales from day one, compounding to a $4MM annual impact.

Strategic gaps don't announce themselves. You have to be specifically looking — with the right lens, the right data, and the right question driving the analysis.

Position is a product decision. Where something lives in a digital menu determines whether it gets seen. Good teams treat hierarchy with the same rigor as UX.

The data is only half the work. Getting a recommendation across the line requires conviction — making the case clearly and pushing until the change actually ships.

Small changes compound. This was one move in a pipeline of optimizations. The discipline is identifying them systematically — not waiting for a redesign to fix what a reposition can solve today.

Results

$11,000 more per day.
No new code. No new budget.

The result was immediate. Moving Munchies Under $4 to a higher-visibility position drove $11,000 in incremental daily sales from the day the change went live. Annualized, that's $4 million — from a category reposition that required no engineering work, no design overhaul, and no additional spend.

$4MM

Annualized revenue impact — from a single change to menu category positioning

$11K

Incremental sales per day — measured immediately after the change shipped

Additional optimizations identified and queued — this was the first, not the last

The outcome validates the approach as much as it validates the change. A team tasked with finding revenue found it — not through a major initiative or a product overhaul, but through structured analysis and the discipline to act on what the data showed. That's what good gap analysis looks like in practice.

This was also the first in a pipeline of optimizations the team identified. The same analytical rigor that surfaced this opportunity is being applied across the broader digital experience — category by category, screen by screen. The $4MM is a proof point. The process is the product.

$4MM from one move.No new features.No new budget.

The mandate was simple: findwhere revenue is being left behind.

A high-converting categorythat guests had to go find.

Find the gap. Build the case.Push until it ships.

$11,000 more per day.No new code. No new budget.

$4MM from one move.
No new features.
No new budget.

The mandate was simple: find
where revenue is being left behind.

A high-converting category
that guests had to go find.

Find the gap. Build the case.
Push until it ships.

$11,000 more per day.
No new code. No new budget.