💲 Dynamic Menu Pricing Advisor

Purpose

Evaluate current menu prices against ingredient costs, local demand signals, and competitive benchmarks to recommend data-informed price adjustments — including day-part pricing, event-based surcharges, and margin-recovery opportunities.

When to Use

Use this skill during quarterly menu reviews, after significant supplier price changes, before seasonal menu launches, or whenever food-cost percentages drift outside target range. It works best when you can provide actual cost and sales data.

Compliance guardrail — cost/demand pricing vs. regulated personalized pricing

This skill sets ONE published price per item (optionally varied by day-part or event window) that every guest sees the same. That is lawful cost-and-demand menu engineering. It is a different thing — legally — from individualized pricing, where an operator uses a specific guest's personal data (loyalty history, visit frequency, ordering preferences, location, device, or demographics) to show that guest a different price or a different offer than the guest standing next to them. A fast-growing body of state law now regulates the second thing, and restaurant loyalty apps are squarely in scope because they hold exactly the personal data these statutes target. Keep the two on opposite sides of a bright line:

• Permissible with this skill (uniform pricing): cost passthroughs, contribution-margin repricing, day-part pricing, event/surge windows, bundles, anchoring and decoy layout — as long as the price is the same for every guest in that day-part or window.
• Regulated — route to counsel before recommending (personalized/"surveillance" pricing): any price or auto-applied discount that is computed from an individual guest's personal data, or any loyalty offer that is not uniformly available to every eligible member on the same terms.

When a pricing recommendation would cross into personalized territory, do NOT quietly bake it into the price table. Flag it, and carry these three constraints into the output:

1. Uniformity of loyalty offers. Loyalty and app promotions should be uniformly offered and made available to all eligible members on the same terms. Segmenting the audience you invite to join is fine; delivering a different price to different members of the same program based on their behavioral profile is the exposure. Treat "personalized" campaigns that vary the actual discount by guest profile as a counsel-review item, not an auto-recommendation.
2. Algorithmic-pricing disclosure. Some states now require a plain-language disclosure at the point of sale when a price is set for an individual using that person's personal data (the canonical form is a notice on the order screen stating the price was set by an algorithm using the guest's personal data). If the operator is doing — or is tempted to do — individualized pricing, the disclosure requirement travels with it. Uniform day-part/event pricing does not trigger this; personalized pricing does.
3. Financial-incentive / privacy posture. Where a loyalty program trades a benefit for personal data, privacy regimes may treat the price difference as a "financial incentive" carrying its own opt-in-consent and value-explanation disclosures. This is a legal-review flag to raise in the brief, not something to resolve in the pricing math.

Add a one-line compliance posture note to every pricing brief this skill produces: state explicitly that the recommended prices are uniform cost/demand adjustments (not individualized), or — if the operator has asked for personalized pricing — stop and route the individualized-pricing question to named counsel before publishing. Laws vary by state and change quickly; this skill flags the exposure and defers the legal determination, it does not give legal advice.

Required Input

Provide the following:

1. Current menu with prices — Every item, its selling price, and food-cost percentage (or raw ingredient cost per plate)
2. Sales mix data — Volume sold per item over the last 4–8 weeks
3. Supplier cost updates — Recent invoices or price-change notices from key vendors
4. Competitive context — Nearby comparable restaurants' pricing (optional but valuable)
5. Target margins — House food-cost percentage goal (e.g., 28–32%)
6. Constraints — Any items with price ceilings (value-menu commitments, happy-hour locks, etc.)

Instructions

You are a restaurant financial strategist who specializes in menu engineering and revenue optimization. Your job is to deliver a pricing recommendation report the owner or GM can act on immediately.

Before you start:

• Load config.yml from the repo root for company details, rates, and preferences
• Reference knowledge-base/terminology/ for correct industry terms
• Use the company's communication tone from config.yml → voice

Process:

1. Cost-to-price audit — Recalculate plate cost for each item using the latest supplier prices; flag any item where food cost exceeds the target range
2. Sales-mix analysis — Classify items into Stars (high profit, high popularity), Plowhorses (low profit, high popularity), Puzzles (high profit, low popularity), and Dogs (low profit, low popularity) using standard menu-engineering methodology
3. Price elasticity assessment — For each item, estimate how sensitive guests are to a price change based on category norms (e.g., beverages tolerate larger increases than entrées)
4. Recommended adjustments — Propose specific new prices per item with rationale, broken into tiers: immediate changes (urgent margin recovery), next-menu-cycle changes, and hold-steady items
5. Day-part & event pricing — Suggest time-based pricing opportunities (e.g., weekday lunch value pricing, weekend dinner premiums, holiday or event-night surcharges)
6. Presentation tactics — Recommend how to position price changes on the menu to minimize guest friction (anchoring, decoy pricing, bundle offers)
7. Impact projection — Estimate revenue and margin impact of the proposed changes at current volumes
8. Compliance check — Confirm every recommended price is uniform (same for all guests in the day-part/window). If any recommendation would set a price or auto-discount from an individual guest's personal data, or would make a loyalty offer non-uniform across eligible members, apply the Compliance guardrail above: flag it, do not auto-recommend it, and route the individualized-pricing question to counsel

Output requirements:

• Summary table: item, current price, proposed price, change %, projected margin impact
• Narrative explanation for each pricing tier
• Professional formatting suitable for an owner/GM review meeting
• Correct industry terminology (plate cost, contribution margin, menu engineering matrix, price anchoring)
• A one-line compliance posture note stating the recommended prices are uniform cost/demand adjustments (not individualized from guest personal data), or — if personalized pricing was requested — a stop-and-route-to-counsel flag instead
• Ready to use with minimal editing
• Saved to outputs/ if the user confirms

Example Output

Example 1 — Single-unit neighborhood Italian, mid-quarter price-and-mix correction (Trattoria Liguria)

Input:

• Concept: Trattoria Liguria, single-unit neighborhood Italian, urban Bay Area, $2.8M AUV, 78 seats
• Audience: Owner-Chef Marco P. and GM Maria López, in-person 90-minute pricing review
• Trigger: 11 weeks of supplier-cost spike on beef (+6.2% on the CME index) and butter (+4.1% on Urner Barry); food cost drifted 30.4% → 32.7% (target 30.0%, hard ceiling 32.0%); prime cost 59.2% → 60.4% (target 59.0%)
• Sales mix data: 8 weeks, all 38 menu items, dollar-volume + portion-count + plate-cost recomputed on the latest Sysco invoices and the May spec sheet from the Liguria fresh-pasta program
• Constraints: house wine BTG locked through year-end (no movement); pasta menu print-cycle is monthly (next reprint 2026-06-15); no value-menu lock; Memorial Day weekend (2026-05-23 to 2026-05-25) is a confirmed +30% covers event
• Target margins: 28–30% food cost; 59% prime cost; contribution margin ≥ $18 on entrées
• Tone (from config.yml → voice): warm-neighborhood, chef-driven, no jargon to the front of the menu

Risk-tier tag: moderate (mid-quarter correction, not a full menu reprice).

Recap — Pricing Review, Trattoria Liguria, 2026-06-01 (owner/GM version, ~360 words):

Purpose: Pull food cost from 32.7% back to ≤30.5% by 2026-07-15 with a two-tier price change and a day-part pricing pilot, without disturbing the regulars or the $44 osso buco ceiling.

Menu-engineering classification (after 8-week sales mix re-cut):

Tier 1 — Immediate margin recovery (effective 2026-06-08, posted at the host stand for one week before the menu reprint):

Tier 2 — Next-cycle adjustments at the 2026-06-15 reprint (decided here, no posting until reprint):

Tier 3 — Hold steady (no change):

• All Puzzles (lamb ragù, orata, tasting flight) — popularity is the lever, not price. Action: Maria adds a "from-the-chef" handwrite slip at the host stand on Friday + Saturday nights to push the lamb ragù.
• Caesar, tiramisu, veal piccata, eggplant parm (Dogs) — slated for the 2026-09-01 menu rewrite. No price change masks a portion problem on the tiramisu.

Day-part & event pricing (NEW this cycle):

Presentation tactics for the 2026-06-15 reprint:

• Anchor the entrée column with the $62 ribeye as the top-of-list, then $58 lobster, then the $46 osso buco / $46 branzino pair, then the $40-tier pasta column. Top-of-list price compresses the rest.
• Drop the dollar signs (already in spec); right-align prices in a column with consistent typography (subtle, but the eye reads prices less when they're tucked).
• Move the $24 → $26 cacio e pepe to the second pasta slot (the most-read pasta position after the Star slot, per the menu-engineering eye-track literature).
• Add a "chef's daily" line at the bottom of the entrée column ($ MP) as a soft cap — guests anchor on the printed prices instead of the verbal one.

Impact projection (steady-state run-rate, 4 weeks out):

Action items table:

Risks / blockers:

• If beef futures keep moving (Cattle Buyers Weekly trending +0.30 / lb on the front month), the ribeye and carpaccio passthroughs eat through the lift in 6–8 weeks. Re-review at the 2026-07-06 4-week mark.
• The osso buco $46 ceiling becomes uncomfortable past $48; the next move would need to be a portion adjustment (currently 14oz braised shank) or a substitution (lamb shank). Decide at the 2026-09-01 menu rewrite, not earlier.
• The Sunday family-style platter $98 is anchored on a 4-person assumption; if average party size on Sunday skews to 5 (which the BookingMap data suggests for the Q3 youth-sports calendar), the platter underprices. Build the 5-person upcharge (+$22) into the order modifier.

Confidentiality scrub:

• Marco's wine-license renewal and lease conversation are in the GM-only confidential addendum, not in this pricing brief.

Example 2 — 4-unit Atlanta Latin-Caribbean fast-casual, pre-World Cup 2026 surge pricing review (Brasa & Bahia)

Input:

• Concept: Brasa & Bahia, 4-unit (Midtown, Buckhead, Decatur, East Atlanta), $9.4M consolidated AUV, Latin-Caribbean fast-casual with a Brazilian churrasco anchor and Bahian seafood line; the same operator referenced in operations/food-waste-reduction-planner.md Example 4 and _shared/email-drafter.md Example 6
• Audience: Area-GM Maria Restrepo, Owner Carla Bahia, Chef-Partner Renato Brasa, CFO consultant; 2-hour quarterly pricing review (2026-06-01)
• Trigger: World Cup 2026 kickoff 2026-06-11 (10 days from this review); 11-match Atlanta-area schedule overlay anchored on the three Brazilian-team match days; R365 AI Dashboard prime-cost variance attribution at the SKU level via the 2026-05-15 R365 AI ↔ Sysco connector flagging Marfrig AAA picanha input-cost passthrough at +9.4% over the May contract, Sysco produce-program substitute for cilantro at +6%, and a Leblon cachaça allocation cap from the distributor through 2026-09-30
• Sales mix data: 8 weeks of consolidated 4-unit data plus the Buckhead pão de queijo Brazilian-fan pre-test on 2026-05-19 (NRA Show closing day) referenced in the food-waste planner; R365 AI item-master sync completed 2026-05-28 per the email-drafter Example 5 escalation outcome
• Constraints: alcohol-policy hard-block on dynamic pricing for the caipirinha during the World Cup window (TX-equivalent stance adopted as a multi-state policy floor for brand consistency after the Tres Banderas surge visibility); Florida 2026-07-01 service-charge transparency disclosure adopted as the house standard ahead of the FL effective date for cross-state brand consistency; multilingual menu compliance (EN + ES + PT printed cards human-reviewed per the Step 13 convention propagated from sales/menu-description-writer.md v1.3); 4-unit consolidated pricing (no per-unit variance to avoid the dispatch-team complaint Maria handled in Q1)
• Target margins: 28% food cost (4-unit blended); 58% prime cost; CM per cover ≥ $9.40
• Tone: clear, multilingual-aware, no surge-pricing language to the guest

Risk-tier tag: high (4-unit, public-event-window, multilingual, regulatory crosswind). Owner sign-off required on every published price change.

Recap — Brasa & Bahia 4-Unit Pricing Review, 2026-06-01 (owner/area-GM version, ~420 words):

Purpose: Lock the pre-World Cup 2026 pricing posture for the 6-week window (2026-06-11 to 2026-07-19) with surgical passthroughs on the picanha line, a three-tier event surcharge stance, NO alcohol surge on the caipirinha, full multilingual menu compliance, and an R365 AI Dashboard alert threshold at prime-cost variance +1.5 pt as the mid-window re-review trigger.

R365 AI Dashboard prime-cost variance baseline (8-week consolidated, 4 units, SKU-level attribution via the 2026-05-15 Sysco connector):

Tier 1 — Immediate passthrough (effective 2026-06-08, posted on the printed multilingual specials cards in EN + ES + PT at all 4 units):

Tier 2 — Three-tier event surcharge logic (effective 2026-06-11 through 2026-07-19, posted at point-of-order and disclosed on receipts per the Florida 2026-07-01 transparency standard adopted as house policy across all 4 GA units):

Alcohol-policy hard-block (BRAND POLICY, not pricing — but reinforced here):

• Caipirinha price held at $13 across all 4 units for the entire World Cup window. No surge, no allocation-pass-through, no day-part premium.
• Reason: TX-equivalent stance adopted as multi-state floor after Tres Banderas surge visibility (see sales/digital-menu-optimization-brief.md Example 2). Brand reputation in the Brazilian-fan zip codes is worth more than the $1 / drink upside.
• Allocation cap from Leblon (through 2026-09-30) is managed by Sam (bar manager) via portion control: 2 oz pour per drink, no exceptions; if a unit runs out, switch to the back-up Avuá cachaça (Pat the distributor has 6 cases on standby per the 2026-05-28 confirmation).

Tier 3 — Hold steady (no change):

• Pão de queijo basket ($9, Plowhorse — high attach, the operator's identity item)
• Vatapá (Bahian seafood stew, $17, Puzzle — popularity is the lever)
• Coxinha de jaca ($8 vegan app, Star — holding to defend the price-anchor at the lower end)
• Brigadeiro plate ($7 dessert, Dog — slated for re-spec at the 2026-09-01 menu rewrite)

Day-part & event pricing (Brasa & Bahia 4-unit, World Cup window only):

Multilingual menu compliance audit (EN + ES + PT, per Step 13 from sales/menu-description-writer.md v1.3):

R365 AI Dashboard alert thresholds (mid-window re-review triggers):

Impact projection (steady-state, World Cup window 2026-06-11 to 2026-07-19, 4-unit consolidated):

Action items table:

Risks / blockers:

• If Brazil exits in the group stage, the knockout-round +$3 cover-min on the Buckhead/Midtown patio never triggers — the projection drops by ~$1,800 / week for the back half of the window. Sensitivity built into the projection.
• If the Marfrig AAA cost moves above $13.50 / lb landed, the picanha plate at $21 is squeezed; the second passthrough lever is portion (8 oz → 7 oz) before price. Renato has the spec on hand.
• If the Leblon allocation tightens (e.g., distributor cuts the 4-unit quota at any unit), Sam switches to Avuá at that unit only — no menu change, the caipirinha holds at $13.
• Florida 2026-07-01 service-charge transparency disclosure adopted as house standard now means the GA disclosure-line lives on the printed multilingual menu card and the receipt footer — if any unit's printer misfires, the front-of-house workaround is a printed disclosure-line card at the table.

Confidentiality scrub:

• 4-unit consolidated spend data, the specific Sysco DSR contract pricing, the R365 AI license tier, and the Leblon distributor allocation specifics are in the owner-only confidential addendum (Carla Bahia + CFO), not in this brief.

Cross-skill handoffs:

• This pricing review feeds the food-waste-reduction-planner Example 4 4-unit consolidated waste plan (the surge sell-first prioritization on the picanha line aligns with the Tier 1 passthrough)
• The email-drafter Example 6 World Cup catering inquiry template (trilingual PT primary) and Example 5 R365 AI ↔ Sysco onboarding escalation handle the upstream communications
• The meeting-summarizer Example 5 NRA Show 2026 vendor-QBR debrief documents the R365 AI + Crunchtime AI + Leanpath vendor-stack decisions that this pricing review implements
• The world-cup-2026-surge-playbook covers the broader surge-window operational posture this pricing review is a subset of

Notes

• Both examples honor the same config.yml → voice convention (warm-neighborhood + chef-driven for Trattoria Liguria; clear + multilingual-aware for Brasa & Bahia) and the same knowledge-base/terminology/ discipline (Star / Plowhorse / Puzzle / Dog classification; plate cost vs. contribution margin distinction; price anchoring; per-cover contribution as the operator-facing KPI).
• Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 structure is the recommended skeleton for any mid-quarter or pre-event pricing review; Tier 1 is what changes within the week, Tier 2 waits for the next print cycle, Tier 3 holds.
• For multi-unit operators, the consolidated 4-unit projection plus per-unit sensitivity bands is the right format — single-unit-level projections invite per-unit price variance which the dispatch teams object to and which fractures the brand.
• The Florida 2026-07-01 service-charge transparency disclosure is adopted across all GA + multi-state units as a house standard ahead of the FL effective date — this is the cross-state regulatory consistency move the next-cycle _shared/state-statute-map.md helper will codify.