Topic · 15 guides
Menu pricing & engineering
What to charge, which dishes earn their place on the menu, and how to raise a price without losing the room.
Guides in this topic
- Menu pricing & engineering
Coffee shop menu engineering: sizes, milk options and rush-hour capacity
Review café profitability without hiding milk and size costs. Includes a reconciled sales-mix example, rush-hour capacity comparison and pastry check.
· 4 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to price combo meals without discounting away your margin
Price a meal bundle against what guests would otherwise buy. Calculate contribution, a discount ceiling and the extra orders needed to cover displaced sales.
· 4 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
Restaurant vs. Grocery Price Inflation Since 2020
Compare restaurant and grocery price changes in 23 BLS local areas through August or September 2026, with matched periods and a worked dish-pricing example.
· 6 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
Free QR Menu Makers Compared: What the Free Plans Include
What free QR menu plans allow in October 2026: dish caps, ads, trial limits, ordering and translation, each read from the vendor's own page.
· 6 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Price a Burger: Cost the Plate at Today's Beef Price, Then Set the Menu Price
Cost a burger line by line, turn the plate cost into a menu price, and see what 2024–2026 beef prices did to burger margins, using BLS and USDA data.
· 7 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Tell Guests About a Menu Price Increase: What the Research Says, Sample Wording and the Fee Rules
Whether to announce a menu price increase, what fairness research says about explaining it, sample wording for menus, regulars and catering clients, and the NYC and state fee rules.
· 8 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How Much to Mark Up Menu Prices on Delivery Apps: The Math, the Rules and What Restaurants Charge
The app price that keeps a dish's contribution at 15%, 25% and 30% commissions, what DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub say about charging more, the cities that protect your prices, and measured markups.
· 7 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Price Catering Per Person: Food, Labor, Service Charges and New York Tax Rules
Turn a catering headcount into purchase quantities, then price food, labor and delivery per guest. Worked yield, pack-rounding and New York service-charge examples.
· 9 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Price Market-Price (MP) Menu Items: A Rule, Price Bands and a Visible Price
Price MP dishes from today's plate cost with a written rule, compare percentage and dollar-contribution rules, set price bands, and show guests the current price.
· 7 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
Menu Psychology: What the Evidence Says About Dollar Signs, Decoys, Anchors and Layout
An evidence review of menu psychology for restaurant owners: which pricing and layout tactics were tested with real orders, how large the effects were, and how to test one yourself.
· 8 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
NYC Delivery App Fee Caps: What Apps Can Charge a Restaurant, and How to Price the App Menu
What NYC law lets delivery apps charge restaurants — 15% delivery, 5% basic service, 20% enhanced service, 3% processing — and how to price an app menu that holds your margin.
· 6 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
Contribution Margin vs. Food Cost Percentage: Compare Two Dishes
Compare food-cost percentage with ingredient contribution per dish and across actual sales volume, using two reproducible dishes and a cost-change scenario.
· 4 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Price a Menu Item: Markup vs. Margin
The formula for pricing a dish from plate cost and target margin, the markup/margin confusion that underprices menus, and the three adjustments before a price goes on the menu.
· 4 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
How to Raise Menu Prices After Ingredient Costs Increase
Model a menu price change after a supplier increase: restore contribution dollars or margin percentage, calculate required volume and approve a measured decision.
· 4 min read - Menu pricing & engineering
Menu Engineering: The Four-Quadrant Matrix
How to build a menu engineering matrix from a POS product mix report — with a full worked example on a 12-item menu and the specific action for each quadrant.
· 5 min read
Terms these guides define
- Menu mix (PMIX)
- The share of total sales each menu item represents — the weights behind every menu-level average.
- Contribution margin
- The dollars a dish contributes to overhead and profit after its ingredient cost — menu price minus plate cost.
- CPI: food away from home
- The Consumer Price Index for what diners pay at restaurants and other foodservice — the national measure of menu price inflation.
- Plate cost
- The total ingredient cost of one served portion, garnish and sides included.
- Q factor
- A per-plate allowance for the small unbilled items — oil, butter, salt, bread service — that never make it onto a recipe card.
- Menu price
- The price a dish is sold at — set from plate cost, target margin, and what the dish is worth in the room.
- Third-party commission
- The percentage a delivery marketplace takes from each order — DoorDash's and Uber Eats' published delivery plans run 15–30% — charged on the order subtotal.
- Cost per serving
- The cost of one served unit of a batch item — a bowl of soup, a slice of pie, an ounce of sauce.
- Batch recipe
- A recipe produced in bulk and portioned at service — soups, sauces, braises, doughs.
- Market price (MP)
- MP on a restaurant menu means market price: the current price is supplied separately instead of printed as a fixed amount.
- Decoy pricing
- Adding a third, deliberately poor-value option to make the option you want chosen look obviously better.
- Price anchoring
- A price is judged against the prices next to it, not in isolation — so menu layout changes what a number means.
- Charm pricing
- Prices ending in 9 or 5 — a small, inconsistent effect in research, and a style convention that differs by format.
- Food cost percentage
- The share of a dish's menu price consumed by the ingredients on the plate.
- Gross margin vs. markup
- Margin is profit as a share of price; markup is profit as a share of cost. Confusing them underprices a menu by several points.
- Value engineering
- Reducing a dish's cost without reducing what the guest perceives they're getting.
- Menu engineering
- Sorting every dish by popularity and contribution margin to decide what to promote, reprice, rework, or cut.
- Stars, plowhorses, puzzles, dogs
- The four menu-engineering quadrants, named by popularity and contribution margin.