How to Price Dishes on Your Restaurant Menu Effectively

The biggest factor that can completely make or break your restaurant business is how the items on the menu are priced.

The biggest factor that can completely make or break your restaurant business is how the items on the menu are priced. Regardless of the business type you run, be it a restaurant, a bar, a bakery, a café, etc., product pricing is of utmost importance. Customers are happiest when they are charged reasonably and restaurateurs are happiest when they are making a good profit.

The main challenge that lies in successful restaurant management is to strike a balance between customer satisfaction and lucrative business.

While calculating the selling price of an item, you must not only account for its ingredients but a lot more. Below are some of the ways of effectively pricing the items on the menu:

• Include prices of raw ingredients

• Include VAT

• Calculate profit per portion served

• Create combos for selling more and earn higher margins

• Profits on alcoholic drinks are highly variable. Capitalise on that by having exciting offers

• Ensure the dishes and glasses are the same size and serve the right volume

• Calculate the price of the best-sellers carefully. The scope for earning a high margin is more since the procurement of ingredients and preparation of the specialities will be on the higher side

• Keep a buffer to protect your numbers against common problems that amount for a drip loss, such as wastage, expiration of ingredients or raw materials, etc.

The best way to offset this loss from accruing is by relying on a restaurant management system that notifies you regarding these concerns and gives you enough time to act on remedial measures

• Account for cooling, storage, cutting, heating, cleaning, heat treatments such as baking, frying, etc.

• Keep your portion size in control by using measuring cups, scales, etc.

• Try and make changes to menu items and not prices

By considering the aforementioned factors, you can price your restaurant menu most effectively make your business more profitable and customers happier.

Torqus is an end-to-end restaurant management solutions provider for the F&B industry.

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