Playbook, restaurant
The menu price is not the line at the bottom of the bill
A guest reading a menu online is building an estimate of what an evening costs, and there are at least four things between that estimate and the printed bill: which days the fixed price menu actually runs, the dishes inside it that carry a supplement, anything priced by the market rather than by the menu, and the service charge added at the end. Every one of those is written down somewhere in the building. Very few of them are on the page the guest is reading.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A fixed price menu is a schedule as much as a price, running at lunch and early evening on some days and not at all on others, so the honest answer to what it costs always has a day and a time attached to it.
- Supplements sit inside the set price rather than beside it, which is the specific confusion in this trade: the guest believes they have chosen three courses for one figure and then finds the steak and the cheese each carry their own addition.
- Market price on a fish course means the number genuinely is not knowable in advance, and the correct behaviour is to say the dish is priced daily and to hand the question to the room rather than to quote whatever a stale file says.
- Service is added after the total rather than built into the dishes, and whether it is discretionary, at what percentage, and above what party size it becomes automatic, are three separate facts that guests ask about as one.
How it arrives
- is the set lunch on at the weekend
- what does market price mean on the fish
- do you add service to the bill
- is there a charge for bringing our own wine
- do you do three courses for a fixed price
- is there a minimum spend for the private room
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The current menus as a page you maintain | Point at the live menu page rather than uploading a file. A menu is the fastest moving document in the building and an uploaded copy quietly quotes last season's prices for months, which in this trade is a bill dispute rather than a small error. |
|---|---|
| The fixed price menu with its schedule | The price, the number of courses, the days and the hours it runs, whether it stops on a bank holiday, and every dish inside it that carries a supplement, with the supplement stated. That last list is where the arguments come from. |
| Service charge, cover and corkage stated as rules | The service percentage, whether it is discretionary and how a guest asks for it to come off, the party size at which it becomes automatic, any cover charge, and corkage per bottle including whether a magnum counts as one bottle or two. |
| Minimum spends and what they include | For a private room or an exclusive hire: the figure, whether it covers food and drink or food only, whether it varies by day, and what happens if the party spends under it. This arrives as an enquiry weeks ahead and is entirely answerable from a document. |
The reply
The two and three course menu runs Tuesday to Friday at lunch and until half six in the evening, and it is not available on Saturdays or on the Sunday menu [1]. Two dishes on it carry a supplement, which is shown next to them on the menu itself, so it is worth reading that column before ordering. The fish of the day is priced daily depending on what came in, so I cannot give you a figure for it and the room will tell you on the night. Service is added at the end and is discretionary, and corkage is charged per bottle if you want to bring your own [2].
It answers with a schedule rather than a price, because the schedule is the part that decides whether the price applies at all. Supplements are pointed at on the menu rather than listed, which keeps the answer correct as the menu moves. The market price dish is refused explicitly instead of being quoted from an old file, since that is the single figure most likely to be wrong.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks what an evening for a named number of people would come to, asks for a bespoke menu price, or is negotiating a rate for a private room or an exclusive hire.
I can quote the published menus but I cannot total an evening or agree a price, and I have no way to see what your booking would come to. Leave me your name, an email, the date and the number of people and whoever handles bookings will come back with a figure.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a price for a dish priced by the market, because that number is decided the morning the fish arrives and quoting it creates a figure the guest expects to see on the bill.
- Never total an evening for a party, since a total combines a menu, supplements, drinks and a service percentage, and a wrong sum is treated as a quotation you gave.
- Never describe the fixed price menu without its days and hours, as the whole complaint in this trade is a guest who ordered it on a Saturday.
- Never say service is included when it is added at the end, or optional when it becomes automatic above a party size, because both errors surface at the moment the card comes out.
Questions
- Should we upload the menu as a file?
- No. Point it at the menu page you already update. An exported copy is a photograph of the menu on the day you made it, and the first time a section changes you have an assistant confidently quoting a dish you stopped serving and a price you no longer charge.
- Can it work out what a table of eight will spend?
- It cannot, and it should refuse. There is no fixed answer to that question even for you, and a figure produced in a chat window becomes the number the guest argues from when the bill arrives.
- Is publishing corkage a bad idea?
- You are asked it either way, usually by the guest who has already put a bottle in the car. Publishing the figure gets it agreed before they arrive rather than debated at the table in front of the people they brought.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- A cancellation typed into a chat box is a no showReleasing a table takes notice the kitchen can still use, and cancelling in a chat window is not cancelling. Say which channel counts.
- Step free to the door is not the same as step free to a tableThe question is which table, not which room: fixed banquettes, a step at the door, and a toilet down a flight of cellar stairs.
- The card machine took it, so the card machine has to explain itA deposit, a prepaid tasting menu seat, a card charge that looks doubled. Money that has left needs the person with the terminal records.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.