1
Establish the floor
Cost the dish properly, including trim loss and any sub-recipes. Apply your target food cost percentage to get a first price, then apply a target gross profit to get a second. Keep both numbers.
Guide
How to price a restaurant menu.
Where the cost-based price stops and the commercial decision starts.
A costing gives you a floor. It tells you the price beneath which a dish makes no financial sense. It does not tell you what to charge, because that depends on your market, your neighbourhood, your service, your competition and what your menu says about you. Confusing the two is the most common pricing mistake, and it runs in both directions: operators who price purely on cost and wonder why nobody orders the steak, and operators who price purely on the competition and wonder where the money went.
This guide covers the part after the arithmetic. How to choose between the two cost-based methods, when to ignore both, how position and description on the menu change what sells, and what happens to all of it when a delivery platform takes twenty per cent off the top.
If you have not costed your dishes yet, start there — the menu costing calculator will take you through it. Everything below assumes you know what your plates cost.
Step by step
2
Test the floor against the market
Look at what comparable venues nearby charge for a comparable dish. If your cost-based price is well above that, the dish needs a different build, a different portion, or it does not belong on the menu at this price.
3
Choose the method that fits the dish
Use percentage pricing for the bulk of the menu where costs are similar. Use gross profit pricing for expensive proteins, where percentage pricing produces a number nobody will pay.
4
Round with intent
Move to a considered price point rather than leaving a raw calculation on the menu. Whole numbers read as confident, .95 endings read as value. Pick one convention and apply it across the menu.
5
Price your delivery channel separately
Work backwards from the commission. If the platform takes 20 per cent, your effective revenue is 80 per cent of the listed price, and the packaging is an extra cost that dine-in never carries.
Menu psychology that actually holds up
Position matters more than font. The first two items in a section and the item in a box get read most, so put dishes you want to sell there — which should be the high gross profit ones, not necessarily the expensive ones.
An anchor works. One deliberately expensive item makes everything below it read as reasonable, and it does not need to sell well to do its job.
Descriptions earn money. A dish with a specific, concrete description — the farm, the cut, the method — supports a higher price than the same dish named in two words.
Long rows of prices in a column invite comparison shopping down the column. Setting the price immediately after the description, in the same size and weight, keeps attention on the food.
What delivery commissions really cost
effective revenue = listed price x (1 – commission %)
delivery gross profit = effective revenue – cost per serving – packaging
A 400-peso dish costing 150 to make earns 250 gross profit in the dining room. Through a platform at 20 per cent commission with 18 pesos of packaging it earns 400 x 0.8 – 150 – 18 = 152. The same dish, the same kitchen, forty per cent less gross profit.
That is not an argument against delivery — it is an argument for pricing it as its own channel, and for knowing which dishes survive the commission and which do not.
When to raise prices
Raise prices when your costs have moved, not on a calendar. A supplier increase on a main protein is a legitimate reason and customers broadly understand it.
Raise in meaningful steps rather than repeatedly by small amounts. Two five-peso rises in a quarter are noticed more than one ten-peso rise.
Change something visible at the same time. A new description, a better plate, a small addition. A price rise attached to a change reads as a decision; a price rise on its own reads as a squeeze.
Questions people actually ask
Should every dish hit the same food cost percentage?
No. A blended target across the menu is the sensible goal. Individual dishes will and should vary widely, particularly expensive proteins, which are priced on cash contribution instead.
How do I raise prices without losing regulars?
Raise on the items least often compared and least often ordered by regulars first, keep your signature dish stable longest, and pair any rise with a visible improvement.
Is it worth offering a cheaper version of a dish?
Often yes, if it is a genuinely different build rather than a smaller portion at a lower margin. A smaller portion at a proportionally lower price usually reduces your gross profit per cover.
Should delivery prices be higher than dine-in?
Where the platform permits it, yes — it reflects a real cost difference. Where it does not, decide consciously whether the volume is worth the reduced margin rather than discovering it later.