Executive lunch: before vs after with Masterestaurant

Where do you start costing an executive lunch?

You start with the standard recipe for every main course that rotates through the week, weighed in grams and priced at the latest invoice, because the menu price is born there and not on the chalkboard of the place next door.

The deliverable for this first step is one sheet per dish listing each ingredient, its trim loss and its cost per portion, and you check it in a very plain way: two different cooks plate the dish and the portion weighs the same. For example, if Tuesday's breaded chicken breast uses 180 grams of raw chicken and its real trim loss is one fifth, the recipe has to say so, because you pay for that loss even when nobody writes it down. Diego F. Parra insists on this order inside the Masterestaurant method, and I hold it without nuance: without a weighed recipe, everything that follows is arithmetic built on sand.

The full menu gets costed, every part of it

The soup, the agua fresca, the tortillas, the rice and the dessert all carry a cost, and in an executive lunch they are exactly where the leak nobody watches hides. Many owners carefully cost the main course and treat the rest as a house courtesy, when on a slow sales day those sides can weigh almost as much as the protein. The deliverable here is the cost of the FULL MENU per guest, adding up every component, and the test is that the food cost of the whole set stays under 32 %, which in our method is a ceiling and never a target. Cheap inputs move too: Publimetro Colombia, with data from La República, recorded that plantain rose 35.1 % year over year in January 2026, and a side like that changes the cost of a corrientazo before the meat ever touches the scale.

Count covers and calculate the break-even point

Payroll, rent and utilities are not charged to the dish, they are covered by volume, so the second calculation is how many menus a day you need to sell to avoid losing money. With the contribution per menu in hand (price minus the cost of the full menu), you divide the month's fixed expenses by that contribution and then by the days you open. For example, if each menu leaves 45 pesos of contribution and monthly fixed costs are 81,000 pesos over 24 service days, the floor is 75 menus a day. The deliverable is that number written at the register, next to the real count of each shift, and it is verified when the cashier can tell at four in the afternoon whether the day has already paid for itself. I got this wrong for years, because I folded rent into the dish and ended up with prices the block would never accept.

How do you set the price of an executive lunch?

You set the price from the cost of the full menu and the break-even point, and only afterwards do you hold it against the market to see whether customers will sustain it.

If the math lands above the neighborhood price, the answer is rarely to cut it: you adjust the portion or change the side, and sometimes you rotate toward a protein with steadier pricing. Looking at a mature market helps calibrate the ear, because in Spain the menú del día reached an average of 16.3 euros in the Basque Country in 2026, according to Merca2, and 15.7 in Catalonia, according to ARA, both drawing on the Hostelería de España and Edenred survey, and that gap between regions reflects local costs that diners accept without fuss. The deliverable is a price with its written justification, verified when the food cost of the full menu sits under the method's ceiling.

Rotate the week and review purchases every month

A menu that rotates daily needs a monthly purchasing review, because Monday's protein and Thursday's do not get more expensive at the same pace and the average lies. The step is to cross the month's invoices against the standard recipes, recalculate the cost of each main course and flag in red any dish that crossed the 32 % ceiling. That dish has two ways out, adjusting the portion weight or changing the side, and if neither is enough it leaves the rotation until its input comes back to price. Watch the temptation to raise the price every time something gets dearer, because the lunchtime customer values predictability: in the Hostelería de España and Edenred survey, 34.5 % of the establishments surveyed point to the fixed, predictable price as the reason for the menú del día (ARA, 2026). The deliverable is a dated cost sheet, compared against last month's.

The mistakes that repeat most when applying this guide

The most common mistake is costing once and calling the job done, when a standard recipe expires with the first invoice that changes. Close behind comes copying the neighbor's price, which imports someone else's cost structure into your business and almost never your own. There is a quieter one: giving away the second glass of agua fresca or the extra tortilla without counting them, and at lunchtime volume that courtesy turns into a loss line. What would happen if you raised the price five pesos without reviewing recipes? You would get a week of relief, customers would notice the change without seeing a better plate, some of them would come less often, and the daily count would fall just below the break-even point you never calculated. Avoiding it is simple and boring: review the cost before you touch the price, always in that order.

How do you know the executive lunch is properly costed?

It is properly costed when every main course in the rotation and the full menu sit under the 32 % ceiling and the daily count beats the break-even point on most days of the month.

The closing checklist we use at Masterestaurant has four boxes, and each is ticked with evidence, never from memory. First, a weighed standard recipe for every dish that enters the week. Second, the cost of the full menu with sides and drink included. Third, the break-even point in menus per day written next to the register, with the real count of each shift beside it. Fourth, a dated purchasing review for the last month, with the dishes over the ceiling already corrected or pulled from the rotation. If a box is empty, the price is still a bet, and tomorrow's task is to fill it before you light the stove.

What really changes between before and after?

The core difference is where the price is born. Before, it comes from the competition on the block;

after, it comes from the recipe, with the day's main under a 32% food cost ceiling and the rest of the menu (soup, agua fresca, tortillas, dessert) costed too, because that is where the capital leak hides. At Masterestaurant we fix that order first and only then talk about promotions. Colombia's corrientazo teaches the same lesson in another currency. Publimetro Colombia, with La República data, puts its average price at COP 17,542 in January 2026, 10.7% above a year earlier, and that figure is built from wholesale ingredient prices, meaning from cost rather than from the menu board. If you can't state your own lunch cost that precisely today, you are still in the before. What happens if you leave the price alone another six months?

What really changes between before and after — in practice?

For example, if your lunch sells for 120 pesos and the main already costs 45, that plate runs at 37.5% food cost;

as ingredients keep climbing, contribution margin per lunch shrinks every week, break-even moves from 70 to 85 lunches a day, and since your room can't turn more seats at peak, the month closes in the red with the kitchen at full tilt. The work continues. The money doesn't. A fixed price is an asset worth protecting. In the Spanish survey reported by ARA, 34.5% of establishments name the closed, predictable price as their reason for running a set lunch, and that predictability helps the office guest budgeting the week as much as it helps you plan purchasing. Diego F. Parra's rule is simple: separate CapEx (the new griddle) from monthly OpEx in a weekly management P&L, so an equipment purchase never reads as a bad month.