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Do restaurant owners care when a customer orders the cheapest food and drink items on the menu? —Scotty C., St. Louis
Generally, no. Every food and drink item is “costed” (i.e., priced to produce a certain profit) before it ever appears on the menu. Sometimes, the cheapest items contribute a high profit margin (pastas, soups); other times, they're low- to no-profit “loss leaders,” priced and placed to get people in the door. Each item contributes a set percentage to the bottom line, so owners don’t care who orders what (unless everyone is ordering the cheap dishes).
Now, servers on the other hand...
This applies to daily specials, too. One local owner is notorious for always asking his chef the food cost of the nightly special first. If the item is not costed and priced properly, it was dismissed, no matter how good it looked or tasted.
Menu pricing is a complicated process that entails the menu mix itself, the pricing structure, and how items are positioned to generate sales. Savvy owners use photos, shading, item boxing, and different copy to steer sales toward profitable items by placing them in the most eye-catching places. The practice even has its own term: menu engineering.
A restaurant bases its viability on an initial pro forma based (among other things) on the anticipated customer counts and the average check per person. If either variable veers too much from the expected parameters, then the restaurant will suffer. One local restaurant ended up closing because its customers began splitting what they perceived as overpriced entrées, which lowered the average check below the profitability point. The same thing could have happened if everyone came in and ordered only a salad and water.
But restaurant owners believe, correctly, that an occasional small check is better than an empty seat and that guests (hopefully) will return to spend more money. And they know that perception is everything: from the street, a full restaurant looks far better than an empty one.
Even the best in the business have a hard time assigning a value to that.
If you have a question for George, email him at gmahe@stlmag.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @stlmag_dining. For more from SLM, subscribe or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
