Menu Engineering Tricks to Lift Average Spend Fast

The difference between a nineteen pound spend and a twenty-four pound spend is rarely the kitchen. It is layout, choice architecture, and the way the team presents options.

Menu engineering is about guiding guests to the items that make you money without making them feel sold to. Nobody leaves feeling pushed. They leave feeling they ordered well.

None of it requires new dishes, a new chef or a new supplier. It requires knowing what each plate actually earns you, then putting that knowledge on the page in the right order. At The Anchor we grew food revenue by 98% in three months, and a fair share of that came from selling the same food better rather than selling different food.

Step 1: Categorise the menu by profit and popularity

You cannot engineer a menu you have not costed. So do the arithmetic first, dish by dish, and be honest about garnish, sauce, oil and wastage.

Take the menu price and strip the VAT out first, because that money was never yours. At the standard 20% rate, divide by 1.2.

Worked example, and these are illustrative numbers, not mine:

Most pubs target somewhere around 65% to 70% food gross profit, so both of these sit in a sensible place. But notice the sandwich, at a lower price and a lower GP percentage, earns almost as much as the burger. That is the whole point. Rank by cash margin times volume, not by percentage.

Now sort every dish into the classic matrix:

• Stars: high profit, high popularity. Protect these and put them where eyes land.
• Plowhorses: low profit, high popularity. Popular for a reason, so do not delete them. Reduce the plate cost, add a chargeable side, or nudge the price by 50p.
• Puzzles: high profit, low popularity. Something is wrong with the name, the description or the position. Fix one of those before you give up on it.
• Dogs: low profit, low popularity. Remove them. They tie up stock, add prep and slow the kitchen.

For inspiration on what to put in the star slots, see our profitable pub food menu ideas.

Step 2: Put your stars where eyes land

Guests skim menus rather than reading them end to end, and position changes what they notice.

Within any list, the first two items and the last item get read properly, and the middle gets skimmed. So the worst place for your best dish is item four of seven. Ignore the folklore about a magic spot on the page and work with the list order instead, because that is the part you can test on your own sales mix.

Practical rules:

• Put stars first or last in their section, never buried in the middle.
• Box or shade one dish per section. One. Box three and you have boxed nothing.
• Cap each section at five to seven items. Long lists cause people to default to the familiar option, which is usually your lowest-margin one.
• Kill the right-hand price column. A tidy column of prices invites people to scan prices and choose the cheapest. Put the price immediately after the description, same size type, no leader dots.
• Drop the pound sign and the decimals where your style allows. "15" reads as a description. "£15.95" reads as a transaction.
• Avoid prices ending .99. In a pub it reads as a discount brand, and it drags your whole menu down with it.

Step 3: Use decoys and anchors

People do not judge a price in isolation. They judge it against the prices next to it.

Put a genuinely premium option at the top of a section and the item below it stops looking expensive. You are not trying to sell the anchor. You are trying to change how the next one reads.

Example:

• Aged sirloin, 24.95 (the anchor, sells a handful, and that is fine)
• Ribeye, 19.95 (the target, your best cash margin)
• Rump, 15.95 (the entry point)

Without the sirloin, the ribeye is the expensive steak and people talk themselves down to the rump. With the sirloin present, the ribeye becomes the sensible middle choice.

The anchor has to be real. It must be a dish you would happily cook and be proud to serve. A fake premium item that never sells and never appears is just clutter, and your team will stop mentioning it.

Step 4: Build add-on lines

This is the cheapest lift on the whole menu, because it is one line of text.

Under key dishes, print the upgrade: "Add halloumi fries 4.50" or "Upgrade to a premium pour 2.00".

The arithmetic, again as an example. Halloumi fries at £4.50 with a plate cost of £1.20 gives you £3.75 ex-VAT and a cash margin of £2.55. If 400 covers a week take it at a 15% attach rate, that is 60 portions and roughly £153 a week of extra gross profit from a printed line. Over a year that is meaningful money for zero extra marketing.

Two cautions. Only offer add-ons on dishes the kitchen can flex without slowing the pass, and only offer things you would genuinely recommend. An add-on people regret ordering costs you the next visit.

Step 5: Pair food and drink on the menu

Most pubs never suggest a drink on the food menu, which is odd given that drink is usually the better margin.

If a dish pairs with a specific drink, name it on the page: "Great with the house Malbec" or "Try it with our session IPA". A named suggestion converts far better than a general invitation to look at the drinks list, because it removes the decision.

Do the same in reverse on the drinks side. Our pub drinks menu design guide covers how to lay a drinks list out so the premium pours actually get chosen, and pairing works hardest when both menus point at each other.

Step 6: Train the team on three scripts

A menu is a silent salesperson. Your team is the one who closes.

Three lines, learned by everyone, used the same way:

• "Most people add the rosemary fries with that."
• "That dish pairs really well with the house red, would you like a glass?"
• "If you are hungry, the sharing board is a great way to start."

Note what these do. They are specific, they name one thing, and they give permission rather than pressure. "Would you like any sides?" invites a no. "Most people add the rosemary fries" gives the guest something to agree with. Track the attach rate on your own EPOS for a fortnight and you will see the difference in your own numbers rather than taking mine.

Run it as a two minute pre-service drill for a fortnight until it stops feeling scripted. Our guide to upselling scripts and training has more lines you can drop in, including how to handle the ones that get a polite refusal.

Keep it legal while you tighten the menu

Two rules shape what has to appear on the page, and one of them has moved recently.

Allergens. You must be able to tell customers whether any of the 14 named allergens are present in non-prepacked food. Since March 2025 the Food Standards Agency's best practice guidance pushes written allergen information as the standard, rather than relying on an "ask a member of staff" sign on its own. In practice that means a written matrix that is easy for a guest to get hold of, backed up by a conversation. Design for it now rather than bolting it on later.

Calories. Mandatory calorie labelling on menus in England applies to businesses with 250 or more employees, so most independents and single-site tenants are outside it. Check your own headcount rather than assuming, and remember that if you do fall in scope it covers online menus and delivery listings too.

Step 7: Run a two-week test

Change one thing. Measure it. Keep it or revert it.

The number to track is spend per head, which is net food and drink sales divided by covers. Pull it from your EPOS weekly. Take four weeks of baseline before you change anything, because a single quiet week will make any change look brilliant or terrible.

Also pull the item-level sales mix report. If you moved a dish to the top of a section, you want to see that dish's share of section sales rise. If it did not move, the problem is the description, not the position.

Menu engineering is one of nine revenue levers struggling pubs should pull. Combine it with the others and the effects compound.

Common mistakes

• Editing the menu monthly without measuring anything, so you never learn what worked.
• Calculating GP on the VAT-inclusive price, which flatters every dish on the menu.
• Leaving low-margin items in prime positions out of habit.
• Adding options instead of removing them. Every extra dish adds prep, stock and waste.
• Deleting a plowhorse because the percentage looks poor, when it was carrying your cash margin.
• Changing five things at once, then having no idea which one moved the number.

Quick checklist

• Every dish costed ex-VAT, with garnish and wastage included.
• Items mapped to stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs.
• Stars placed first or last in their section, one box per section.
• Price column removed, prices set inline after the description.
• A real premium anchor at the top of each main section.
• Add-on lines printed under your three best-selling dishes.
• Drink pairing named on at least four dishes.
• Three scripts drilled with the team.
• Written allergen information ready and accessible.
• Four weeks of baseline spend per head recorded, two-week test scheduled.

Mini FAQ

How often should I redesign the menu? Two proper reviews a year, with small seasonal swaps in between. Constant redesign confuses regulars and gives you no clean data.

If you want help redesigning your menu for profit, explore our pub marketing.