E-BOOK
Menu Pricing for Profit
Eight chapters on the arithmetic that sets a price, the VAT that hides inside it, and the matrix that decides which dishes deserve their place. The worked menu is The Lantern House’s eight dishes, the same ones in the Menu Engineering Workbook, where the bestseller turns out to be underpriced and thirty pence fixes it.
- Eight chapters, one menu, the pricing error that costs six points
- The two numbers on every dish: the GP that steers, the pounds that pay
- Psychology kept honest, and the quarterly reprice as a ritual
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Who this e-book is for
Owners and head chefs who price by feel, by the competitor across the road, or by a spreadsheet built before VAT registration, and suspect the menu is quietly giving something away.
You priced the menu before you understood the VAT step
Then chapter two probably owes you money: a 70 per cent GP on a £3.20 plate is £10.67 ex VAT and £12.80 on the menu, and the version that stops a step early quietly earns 64. Six points of GP on a busy dish is thousands a year, silently, on every dish priced the same way. The zero-rated takeaway wrinkle cuts the other way, which is why the same kitchen can earn different margins through two doors.
Your bestseller has never been questioned
The matrix chapter tells the story that makes the method stick: the demo menu’s bestselling fish pie turns out to be a plough horse, popular but earning £7.37 against the menu’s £7.47 average, and thirty pence on the price or a penny off the plate moves it to a star. Nobody cancels a booking over 30p. The 70 per cent rule keeps the popularity line honest, and each quadrant gets its own move rather than a menu-wide gesture.
Your plate costs are two supplier price files old
Chapter three costs the plate honestly, yield included, where the £6.80 kilo at 82 per cent usable is really £8.29, and chapter seven watches the suppliers: the demo tracker’s twelve items rose £2,458 a year in one quarter, a quarter of a GP point, met dish by dish with a re-price, a re-portion or a re-spec rather than panic. Chapter eight makes the whole thing a quarterly ritual of five steps, ending with telling the team why.
FACTS
Percentages steer, pounds pay
A 65 per cent dish earning £9 of cash margin beats an 80 per cent dish earning £4, every service, because rent is paid in pounds. The book runs both numbers on every dish, sets targets by category rather than menu-wide, and lets the blended figure fall out instead of being aimed at.
8 chapters
Arithmetic, matrix, psychology, ritual
30p
What moves the demo bestseller from plough horse to star
FACTS
Psychology that is not snake oil
The honest advantages: one genuinely premium dish anchors the middle of the menu, .95 endings read softer in full service while whole pounds read confident in fine dining, the puzzles belong where eyes land first and last, and forty words of description outsell a font trick. The book skips the tricks that insult your guests, because regulars notice manipulation faster than margins.