TL;DR
Menu engineering is the discipline of sorting every item on your menu by two axes: how much money it makes and how often it sells. Stars are high margin and popular. Plowhorses are popular but low margin. Puzzles are high margin but slow. Dogs are neither.
Menu pricing is the number that decides whether the math works at all. A menu without engineering leaves margin on the table. A menu without a pricing method invites price wars you cannot win.
This series is the applied playbook: how to sort your items, how to price the ones worth pricing, how to raise prices without losing guests, and how to grow check average without adding covers.
This is the menu and pricing track. It sits under revenue and margin. If your food cost keeps drifting up but nothing on the plate has changed, or check average has been flat while inflation has not, the answer is on this page.
Every article in this series is written for operators, GMs, and finance seats. No frameworks that only work in slides. Only moves you can make in a real menu meeting.
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Every article in the series
Ordered newest first. New pieces appear automatically as they publish.
How to read the series
If you are new to the series, work through it in this order.
- Menu Engineering: Stars vs Plowhorses. The framework. Sort every item by margin and mix.
- Optimizing Menu Mix for Profitability. What to do with Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs once you know which is which.
- Menu Pricing: How to Set Prices That Protect Your Margin. The pricing methods actually worth using.
- How to Price Your Menu for Profit. The math on individual items.
- Raising Menu Prices: When to Do It, How Much, and How to Communicate It. The playbook for the price increase itself.
- Check Average: The Fastest Lever for Growing Restaurant Revenue. Why check average beats traffic in a flat quarter.
- Strategic Upselling. How to grow revenue without growing traffic.
- Increasing Party Size. The revenue lever hidden in plain sight.
- Navigating Costs and Value. How to protect margin without losing guest perception.
- Discounting Strategies. Why discounts almost always cost more than they appear.
FAQ
Who is the Menu & Pricing Series for?
Operators, GMs, and finance seats who own the menu math. If a menu meeting or a pricing decision crosses your desk, the series is for you.
Where should I start?
Start with the Menu Engineering article. It gives you the four-quadrant frame that every other piece in this series builds on. Then work through the pricing pieces before the revenue-lever pieces.
How is this different from the Prime Cost Series?
Prime Cost is about food and labor cost math on the P&L. Menu and Pricing is about how the menu itself drives the top line and the margin. They meet at food cost percentage but the levers are different.
How often does the series update?
New pieces appear on this page automatically as they publish. The list above is generated live from the series tag, ordered newest first.
Written by The Pragmatic CFO.