Ongoing retainer
A redesigned menu is correct on the day it launches and slightly less correct every month afterwards. A retainer exists because ingredient prices do not sit still and nobody in your kitchen has time to keep up with them.
What the retainer covers each month
- A costing refresh against your current invoices, with every dish repriced in the model and any line that has drifted beyond an agreed tolerance flagged.
- Updated matrix classification from your latest sales mix, so you can see dishes moving between quadrants before it shows up in the P&L.
- A one page report: weighted GP, movement since last month, the three things worth acting on.
- A monthly call with you and your head chef.
- Seasonal menu changes, to a number agreed at the start, developed and costed within the retainer.
- Standing access. When a supplier puts a price up mid quarter, you get an answer on what to do about it within a few working days rather than at the next review.
A menu starts decaying the day it goes live
A redesign is a point in time. Everything it was built on starts moving the following week.
Supplier prices move, and they do not move evenly: protein, dairy and oils shift fastest and are usually the biggest lines on a plate. Portions drift, because a new chef de partie plates slightly more generously than the one who was trained on the spec. A supplier substitutes a product and nobody records it. A dish gets improved, correctly, by a chef who cares, and the improvement costs eleven pence that nobody has costed. Sales mix shifts with the season, so the weighting changes even when no individual dish has.
None of that is anyone doing anything wrong. It is a kitchen operating normally. But the compound effect is that a menu signed off at a given gross profit will not be delivering it a year later, and the first anyone usually knows is a stock take that does not reconcile.
The retainer exists because that gap reopens on its own, and because catching it monthly is considerably cheaper than rebuilding annually.
What gets watched, and what triggers a call
Every dish is repriced each month against your actual invoices, on the basis set out here. Any line that has drifted beyond an agreed tolerance is flagged, which means you find out that the beef has moved three percent in the month it happens instead of in the quarter it shows up.
The matrix is rerun on your latest sales mix, so you can watch dishes move between quadrants. That movement is the early signal. A star sliding towards plowhorse is telling you its plate cost has crept before the P&L does, and it is a far easier conversation at that stage than six months later when the dish has to come off.
What comes back is one page: weighted gross profit, movement since last month, and the three things worth acting on. Not a dashboard. Three things, in order, with the reason.
Drift is cheaper to catch than to fix
A dish that has drifted a few pence is a specification conversation and a word with the section. The same dish left for a year is a repricing decision, which means a menu reprint, which means a guest who has been paying one price for twelve months now paying another.
The same applies to supply. When a supplier puts a price up mid quarter, the useful window for doing something about it is days, not months. That is what the standing access is for: you get an answer on whether to absorb it, re-spec around it or move the price, while there is still a choice to make.
Seasonal changes are developed and costed inside the retainer to an agreed number per year, which is usually the point at which this stops being an overhead and starts being cheaper than commissioning the same work piecemeal.
Most single sites do not need this
Worth saying plainly, because a retainer is the easiest thing on this site to oversell.
One audit, one redesign, and a costing spreadsheet you maintain yourself will get most single site operators most of the way. If you have a head chef with the time and the inclination to reprice the menu quarterly, you do not need to pay someone else to do it. The recipe costing calculator and the food cost calculator are free and will do the arithmetic.
A retainer earns its fee when there are multiple menus, multiple sites, or a genuine lack of time inside the business. If none of those apply to you, I will say so on the first call.
What the fee depends on
A monthly fee, quoted on the number of kitchens and the number of menus in scope. Rolling rather than a fixed term, so it runs for as long as it is earning its keep and stops when it is not.
Most sites start after an audit or a redesign, once there is a baseline worth protecting. Starting a retainer before anything has been measured means paying to monitor a number nobody has established.
When I will tell you to stop
If three consecutive months pass without the retainer earning its fee, I will raise it before you do, and we will either change the scope or stop. A retainer that has quietly become a subscription is not doing its job, and the costing refresh and the report run whether or not you engage with them, so it would be easy for that to go unnoticed for a year.
It is also not an on call phone line with a consultancy attached. The monthly work happens regardless. If what you want is someone to ring occasionally, you want the audit and an open invitation to get back in touch.
A retainer keeps every part of the menu costed as prices move. The sections are set out in menu profitability by section.
Menu engineering retainer FAQs
Can I pause it?
Yes, on notice agreed in the engagement letter. Seasonal businesses often run the retainer for the trading season and pause through the quiet months.
What happens if I do not use it one month?
You get the costing refresh and the report regardless, because those run whether you engage or not. If three consecutive months pass without it earning its fee, I will raise it before you do.
Is the audit fee credited if I start with a retainer?
Yes, if the retainer starts reasonably soon after the audit. The window is set out in the quote.
Who is the monthly call with?
You and your head chef as a minimum. On multi site accounts, usually the ops director and whoever owns food across the estate.
Not sure a retainer is the right shape?
Start with an audit. If the findings are the kind of thing that needs managing monthly rather than fixing once, that will be obvious from the numbers, and I will tell you either way.