There are many great ideas in getting your customers to spend more money with you and to receive a better dining experience. These ideas should be personalized and adapted to your restaurant. Restaurant marketing takes planning and will take some work, forethought and most of all, it's going to take self-discipline to put your restaurant marketing in high gear and implemented but it certainly is worth the effort.

Even raising menu prices takes planning. RMG Marketing has a separate manual that addresses: "Structuring Your Menu For Profitability". We highly recommend that you take the time to completely go through this information. In the long run, it will maximize your profits.

In the short run, you may need to immediately Raise Your Prices. But, never try and guess what you think your customers will be prepared to pay. Here are some things to consider:

• The way that you set your menu prices is really according to supply and demand. The more in demand that you are, the more that you can charge.
• You can determine your demand by your sales volume and when your sales volume comes during the day or the week. Do you have waiting lines? Waiting lines are a good sign that you can charge more money.
• If you are concerned about Raising Your Menu Prices ... evaluate and test. You need to know what your sales mix is. If 70% of your sales come from 3 or 4 of your menu items, then if you only Raise the Prices on these three or four items it will have a very positive affect on your bottom line.
• You can also "Evaluate and Test" with daily specials and/or features to determine what the customer will pay for a particular menu item. Be sure to price these menu items above your average gross profit for menu item categories.
• When considering Raising Your Prices be aware of certain psychological barriers. If you think $9.99 is your highest price perception, you may want to test one "like" menu item at $9.99; one at $12.95; and one at $8.95. These could actually be the same menu items prepared in three different and distinct ways. By doing this, you can get a good understanding of how your guests "feel" about price points.

Take nothing for granted on price. Do your own testing, but give a high perceived value on every menu item. There are many, many factors to consider that have nothing to do with price.

Testing done on the customer perceptions of pricing reveals that if a menu item is priced under $5.00, the rounding strategy is .25, .50, and .75 price points. If a menu is priced over $5.00, the price points are .50 and .95. If you have questions about exactly where the price points should be, always take them to the next highest level. Instead of $9.50, go to $9.95.

Back to Top