The Price You Have Not Changed

Prices in most venues move the same way: nothing for two years, then everything at once by a round percentage, usually after a supplier increase makes it unavoidable.

That is the most visible and least profitable way to price. A single across-the-board rise is the version guests notice, and it raises the items where you had room alongside the ones where you did not.

Why across-the-board is the expensive option

Three reasons.

It is legible. A guest who buys the same drink every week notices a change to that drink. Twenty simultaneous changes make the shift obvious in a way that staggered ones do not.

It ignores where the margin actually is. Your items do not have uniform margin. A flat rise widens the gap on the ones that were already good and leaves the bad ones bad.

It wastes the low-attention items. Some items — a mixer, a specific spirit, a garnished house cocktail — are simply not price-checked by anyone. Those absorb increases invisibly and they get exactly the same treatment as your most-watched item.

The two-by-two that decides it

Sort every item by two things: how much it sells and how good the margin is.

High volume, good margin. Protect these. Do not touch the price, do not change the spec, and make sure they are never out of stock. This is your night.

High volume, poor margin. The most important quadrant. High volume means guests notice, so a price rise here is your most visible move — but poor margin means it is costing you at scale. Fix the cost side first: portion, spec, supplier, glass. Only raise the price if the cost side genuinely will not move.

Low volume, good margin. Sell more of these. The lever is placement and staff recommendation, not price.

Low volume, poor margin. Delist. Every one of these occupies menu space, inventory, and training. Cutting them is free margin.

Most venues have never sorted their menu this way, and the exercise takes about an hour with a POS export.

The price nobody checks

Worth its own paragraph, because it is where quiet increases live.

In most rooms guests price-check a small number of items — usually the house beer, the well spirit, and the most-ordered cocktail. Everything else is bought without reference to what it cost last time.

A modest rise on the unchecked items produces meaningful margin with almost no perception cost. A rise on the checked ones produces conversation.

Knowing which of yours is which requires only your sales mix and about ten minutes of asking your bartenders. They know exactly which prices get commented on.

Staggering

Rather than one annual event, move a small number of items each quarter.

The advantages are practical: the change is absorbed, you can see the volume effect on the specific items you moved, and you are never in the position of needing a large rise all at once because you have not moved anything in two years.

Watch volume on the moved items for four weeks. If it drops materially and does not recover, that item was price-sensitive and you have learned something worth more than the increase.

The thing that is not price

Before raising anything, check whether the problem is price at all.

Portion drift. The pour that was thirty millilitres is now closer to forty because the jigger went missing. This looks exactly like a margin problem and is not solved by a price rise.

Spec drift. A garnish got upgraded, a mixer got switched, a glass got bigger. Same effect.

Waste. Breakage, spillage, remakes. Priced into nothing and paid for anyway.

⚠️ Raising a price to cover a cost problem you have not diagnosed means the price rise gets absorbed by the same leak, and in six months you need another one. Check the cost side before the price side, every time.

Three numbers to hold

Margin by item, sorted by volume. The two-by-two. Once a quarter, one hour.

Volume for four weeks after any price change, on the changed items only. Tells you whether that item was sensitive.

The last date each price changed. Most venues cannot answer this per item, which is exactly why everything moves at once.

Where the record has to sit

That third number is the one that requires the record. Without a price history per item, "when did we last move this" is unanswerable, and unanswerable becomes "let us just do everything."

tasteck keeps item-level sales and price history together, so the two-by-two and the post-change volume check are both readable from the same place rather than assembled from exports.

Prices are going to move. Whether they move where the margin is, or everywhere at once, is the whole difference.