How to Price a Cafe Menu (UK)
Cornerstone cafe guide. Pricing a menu on GP, then checking what the plate actually earns once packaging, labour and waste are counted.
The short answer
Price a cafe menu by costing each dish's ingredients, dividing by your target food cost percentage to get the price, then checking the true margin once packaging, the staff time to make it, and expected waste are added. A 70 percent GP is the industry benchmark, but GP counts food only, so it is a starting point rather than an answer.
Step by step
- Cost each dish's ingredients properly. Convert every purchase to a cost per gram, millilitre or each, and include the trim you throw away. A sandwich is bread, filling, butter and the end of the loaf nobody eats.
- Divide by your target food cost. At a 30 percent target, a £1.35 dish prices at £4.50. That is your GP-based starting price.
- Add what GP ignores. Packaging, the minutes of staff time to build it, and the waste you write off at close. None of these appear in gross profit.
- Check the true margin. If the honest figure is far below your GP, the price is doing less work than the board suggests.
- Re-cost when invoices move. A menu priced at opening drifts every time a supplier does, and nothing on the board tells you.
Worked example: a 70 percent GP sandwich
Costed the way most cafes do it, then costed properly.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | £1.35 |
| Priced at a 30% food cost | £4.50 |
| Gross profit | 70.0% |
| Takeaway packaging | £0.28 |
| Build time, 3 minutes at £12 | £0.60 |
| Waste allowance at 8% of food | £0.11 |
| True cost of the plate | £2.34 |
| True margin | 48.0% |
The same sandwich, the same price. Seventy percent on the board, forty eight in reality. Nothing was priced wrongly; the three costs that GP does not see simply were not counted.
Why it matters
Gross profit is a useful number that answers a narrow question, and cafes routinely treat it as the whole answer. Costing packaging, labour and waste alongside it is what turns a healthy-looking menu into one that actually pays the wages.