How to increase average spend per cover without raising prices

About this guide to spend per cover

The short answer: how to increase spend per cover

Average spend per cover goes up when guests order more items, when the items they order cost more, or both. The menu can move all three without a single price change: put the dishes that earn the most cash where guests look first, give every course a reason to be ordered, and price add-ons as add-ons. Then measure cash gross profit per cover, not just spend, because an extra £1.00 on the till is worth different amounts depending on how it arrived.

What spend per cover is, and how to calculate it

A cover is one guest served, not one table. Average spend per cover is net food sales divided by covers for the same period. Both numbers are on your EPOS report.

• Use net of VAT. A £30.00 spend including VAT is £25.00 net. Gross profit is worked out on the net figure, so spend should be too, or the two will not tie.
• Keep food on its own. Mixing food and drink in one figure hides what the menu is doing. This guide is about the food menu.
• Compare like with like. Lunch and dinner, a Tuesday and a Saturday, are different rooms. A single weekly figure averages away the thing you are trying to see.

The profit per cover estimator runs the same arithmetic on your own numbers and shows what a change in spend is worth over a year.

The three things that move it

Spend per cover splits into two multiplied numbers, and the second one hides a third.

Items per cover

How many dishes, sides and extras the average guest orders. A site at 2.5 items a cover has some guests on one item and some on four. Moving it by a tenth of an item means one guest in ten adds something. This is the attach rate: the share of guests who add a starter, a dessert or a side.

Price per item

What the average item costs the guest. It moves when prices change, but it also moves when the mix changes: if more guests choose the dearer dish in a section, the average rises with no price touched.

Mix, the one that decides the profit

Two dishes at the same price can earn very different cash, because their plate costs differ. Steering guests from a dish that earns £9.00 to one that earns £12.00 changes profit even if the till total barely moves. This is why menu engineering scores every dish on cash earned as well as popularity.

The same £1.00 more per cover, with a different result in cash

Illustrative site and figures, not a client result

Take a site with 1,200 food covers a week at £25.00 net a cover. That is 2.5 items at an average £10.00 net, with an average plate cost of £3.00 an item. Food cost per cover is £7.50, so each cover returns £17.50 in cash gross profit, or £21,000 a week.

Two different moves each add £1.00 to the average spend:

The extra item brings its own plate cost, so only £7.00 of its £10.00 is cash: 0.1 × £7.00 = £0.70 a cover. A price rise adds the whole £1.00 to cash, if no one is lost. That condition is the catch. At £18.50 cash a cover after the rise, the site earns the same as today at about 1,135 covers a week, so it can lose about 65 covers, or 5.4 percent, before the rise earns less. Past that, the higher price costs more than it brings in.

A mix move is worth the difference in cash, not in price. If one main in five switches from a dish earning £9.00 to one earning £12.00, with one main a cover, that is 0.2 × £3.00 = £0.60 a cover, or £720 a week, with no price changed.

The point is not that one move is better. It is that spend per cover cannot tell them apart, and cash per cover can.

Where the menu raises spend per cover

These are the places to look first. Each one changes how many items a guest orders or which items they choose, and none of them needs a price rise.

1. Make the best earners easy to find. Guests read a menu in a pattern and decide quickly. The dishes that earn the most cash belong where the eye lands, with wording that sells them. How to write menu descriptions covers the wording.
2. Give each course a reason to be ordered. A starter or dessert that sounds like an afterthought is skipped. Because the table is already seated, an added course carries the food cost of that course only, and the seat and the labour were already paid for. The starters and desserts pages cover each section.
3. Price add-ons as add-ons. A side or a sauce priced separately adds a line to the cover. The same item folded into the main price is a missed line. Check each side against its own cost, not against the dish it sits beside.
4. Build the ladder. Each section needs a clear top dish that sets the frame. A premium line at the top makes the dishes beneath it read as reasonable, and some guests trade up to it. The menu pricing guide sets out how.
5. Offer a sharing or set option, costed as a whole. A sharing plate or a set menu can lift items per cover, but it is a bundle, so cost it as one: the cheapest items in it are the ones guests will choose.
6. Trim the choice. A short menu is quicker to read, quicker to cook and easier to steer. Cutting the weakest dishes sends their orders somewhere, and it is worth choosing where.

When higher spend per cover is not higher profit

• Spend rises and gross profit falls. A guest who orders a second, expensive, low-margin dish raises spend and can lower the percentage you keep. Look at cash per cover alongside the percentage.
• The kitchen cannot send it. A dish that raises spend but takes the section four minutes longer at the peak can slow every other table. The labour cost guide covers this.
• Covers fall as spend rises. A price rise or a push that puts guests off lowers covers. Count total cash, covers times cash per cover, not either number alone.
• The comparison is unfair. A busy Saturday against a quiet Tuesday is not a test. Compare the same service on the same days.

How to test a change

Pick one change, run it for a few weeks on the same days and services as the baseline, and compare cash per cover, not only spend. Take the baseline from the same EPOS report, net of VAT, before you change anything. Change one thing at a time. Otherwise you will not know which change did the work, and a quiet week will be mistaken for a result.

In what order to do it

1. Calculate spend per cover and cash per cover for lunch and dinner separately, net of VAT.
2. Find the attach rate for starters, desserts and sides, from the EPOS item report.
3. List the dishes by cash earned, and mark where the top earners sit on the menu.
4. Change one thing: usually the position or wording of a top earner, or the prompt for a second course.
5. Measure again against the same services, and keep what moved cash.

For a pub, the same sequence is shaped by the Sunday trade and wet sales, set out on the pubs and gastropubs page. For the wider question of covers against spend, see how to increase restaurant sales.

Increasing spend per cover: FAQs

Keep reading. Spend per cover works differently by section: mains, desserts and starters. See also menu profitability by section and the GP calculator.