Sample result
Irresistible Offer Builder for Restaurants
The owner asked this:"Tuesday to Thursday nights sit at 25 or 26 covers at my main location. I want something that moves them without cutting menu prices, and that I can also announce through my own delivery."
① Three candidates and their math
The reference first: a normal visit leaves 31,680 COP. An average check of 48,000 COP against the declared 34% food cost; payroll and rent stay outside the product, on offer too. That is the number no candidate may touch by more than a fifth.
Three moves were ruled out before anything got costed. The 2-for-1 on the bandeja gives away 28,600 COP of margin per table without changing a single thing the guest receives. The 20% off the whole menu gives up 9,600 COP per visit —30% of the margin— and trains the guest to wait for the discount. And the "free dessert" with no time slot lands on Tuesday-to-Friday lunch, which already fills on its own: there the house pays for people who were coming anyway.
| Offer | Anchor | Booster | Condition | Deadline | Real cost | Margin per visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bandeja completa | House bandeja, 42,000 COP | Mazamorra with panela, 130 g | Tuesday to Thursday nights, dining room only | 6 nights, closes Thursday 10 September | 1,450 COP | 31,950 COP · gives up 4.3% |
| Sancocho de a dos | Three-meat sancocho, 38,000 COP | Panela lemonade jug, 1 L | Table of two or more | Four Saturday middays | 2,100 COP | 24,850 COP per guest · gives up 19.1% |
| Trucha con copa | Garlic trout, 52,000 COP | Glass of white wine, 150 ml | One glass per dish, no swaps | Six Friday and Saturday nights | 7,900 COP | 26,400 COP · gives up 32.5% |
The booster costs come from three days of weighing against a signed standard recipe card, not from anybody's memory: the mazamorra is 130 g of cooked corn with panela and milk; the jug, one litre with 180 g of panela. They are assumed until you check them against the month's purchase invoices.
And a warning that falls straight out of the math: the house bandeja closes at 31.9% food cost and the sancocho at 31.8%, but the garlic trout runs at 34.0%, above the 32% the house rule sets. There the problem is not the offer: it is the trout's menu price. Illustrative figures, built from the data you gave.
② Desire against cost: which one dies
The cost axis is not what the booster costs but what share of the visit's margin it takes away. The house ceiling is a fifth, and past that point a candidate is not debated, it falls.
| Gives up under 20% of the margin | Gives up over 20% | |
|---|---|---|
| Proven pull | Bandeja completa. Goes to test. The bandeja is the most ordered dish and the mazamorra is the dessert half the table ends up ordering anyway. It gives up 1,450 COP of the 33,400 COP that visit leaves: 4.3%. It is the only quadrant where the booster does not compete with a sale. | Trucha con copa. Dies here. The pull is real: the trout is the occasion dish. But the 150 ml glass costs 7,900 COP and also replaces the drink that table was going to pay for, so the visit drops from 39,100 to 26,400 COP of margin. That is 32.5%, well over the ceiling. |
| Medium pull | Sancocho de a dos. Held back. The jug costs 2,100 COP, but it takes away the two drinks the table was going to order: margin per table falls from 61,400 to 49,700 COP, 19.1%, one point off the ceiling. It is not discarded; it gets tested on its own and in another slot, because two offers at once on the same audience never tell you which one moved the sales mix. | No candidate was written in here, and that is a decision too. An expensive booster on a dish nobody misses is not an offer: it is a cost with a nice name. |
The judgement behind the matrix, declared and arguable: a booster that replaces a sale costs twice what the invoice says. The glass of wine is paid for twice —the 7,900 COP of wine and the 4,800 COP of the drink nobody orders now— and that second half shows up on no costing sheet.
The concession: if Tuesday night sat at 8 covers instead of 26, the right-hand column would read differently. With an empty room those 12,700 COP stop being a gift and become the cost of bringing someone in. At 26 covers, they do not.
③ The winner, ready for the table
It goes on the table without editing anything: only the two dates change.
| Section | What it says |
|---|---|
| Name | Bandeja completa. Two words a server says with the tray in hand and a guest repeats over the phone. Not "promo", not "combo": both announce there is fine print. |
| The selling line | "The same bandeja as always, and behind it the mazamorra with panela your grandmother used to make. Home cooking, served like a restaurant." One sentence, the whole promise, no borrowed adjectives. |
| Condition | Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 6:00 to 10:00 p.m., in the dining room. One mazamorra per bandeja; it is not swapped for another dessert and it does not go home in a box. |
| Why that condition | Weeknight dinner is the slot stuck at 25 or 26 covers. Tuesday-to-Friday lunch and Sunday midday need no help, and there the offer would only give dessert away. And the dessert does not travel: on delivery it arrives set solid and the complaint lands on the bandeja. |
| Closing date | Thursday 10 September, printed on the table card. No "while stocks last": an offer with no date is, eight weeks in, simply your new price. |
| What it does not promise | Neither waiting time nor an available table. The night kitchen is the same one as always and the offer does not make it bigger. |
The table card, full text (half a page, printed in the office):
Bandeja completa. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, your house bandeja comes with mazamorra with panela. Until Thursday 10 September. Dining room only, one per bandeja.
What the server says, standing up and in one sentence (read as written):
Just so you know, until Thursday the 10th the bandeja comes with our mazamorra, at no charge. Shall I bring it with the bandeja or after?
It is said when the order is taken, never when the check is brought. Said at the end it is a nice gift nobody comes back for; said at the start it is the reason that table ordered the bandeja and not the 32,000 COP dish.
The full example has 2 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.