Articles
Ideas worth a few minutes.
Short, practical reads on the thinking behind the tools — menu strategy, costing and event profit — for hospitality operators who'd rather make decisions on numbers than hunches.
New products
Will a new product actually make you money?
A proposed price isn't a margin. Whether a new line is worth listing comes down to one test — does what's left after cost, tax and the cut clear your budget?
Read article →Menu strategy
Menu cannibalisation: the real cost when a new dish eats an old one
A new item's sales figure is not the money it made you. Whether the switch pays comes down to one number: the contribution gap per switched sale.
Read article →Pricing
How much of a bundle's sales are actually new?
A meal deal only adds money if it captures spend that wouldn't have happened. The realistic benchmark for incrementality is about half.
Read article →Pricing
How much does bundling really lift sales?
The "20–30% uplift" stats don't survive scrutiny. What actually decides a bundle is the margin mix inside it — and whether the take-up is genuinely new.
Read article →Pricing
Will a price rise cost you sales?
Far less than you fear — and a rise pays off on every sale you keep. The evidence and the break-even arithmetic.
Read article →Pricing
How much does a discount really lift sales?
In a café or restaurant, far less than the big retail numbers suggest — about 0.8× the cut, and often not enough to pay.
Read article →Menu engineering
Stars, Plough horses, Puzzles and Dogs
Every dish quietly does one of four jobs. Two professors worked out how to tell which — 40 years on, it still runs the best menus.
Read article →Menu planning
Your next menu is a financial decision
A new menu lives or dies on the numbers behind it, not the photos on the front. The case for planning it line by line first.
Read article →Costing
If you don't know what a dish costs, you don't know what it earns
The price on the menu is a guess until you know the cost behind it. Costing a recipe takes minutes and changes every decision after.
Read article →Pricing
The discount that has to sell twice as much to stand still
"20% off" sounds like you need 20% more sales. You almost never do — the cut comes straight out of the slice you keep.
Read article →Events
An event can be packed and still lose money
A sold-out function isn't the same as a profitable one. The difference is in the costs you can't see from the door.
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