Sample result
Price Increase Simulator for Restaurants
The owner asked this:«My supplies went up 7% in three months and my goal for the year was to raise margin without touching the menu. What do I do?»
① How much each dish actually moved
The input's rise is not the dish's rise. Before touching a price, the re-costing with the standard recipe and with invoices from the last 90 days:
| Dish | Menu price | Cost before | Cost today | Margin before | Margin today | Margin lost per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bandeja de la casa | $42,000 | $14,200 | $14,850 | $27,800 | $27,150 | $767,000 |
| Trucha al ajillo | $46,000 | $16,400 | $17,030 | $29,600 | $28,970 | $340,000 |
| Sancocho de tres carnes | $38,000 | $12,600 | $13,020 | $25,400 | $24,980 | $319,000 |
| Posta a la criolla | $52,000 | $18,900 | $19,780 | $33,100 | $32,220 | $273,000 |
| Patacón con carne desmechada | $34,000 | $11,800 | $12,310 | $22,200 | $21,690 | $214,000 |
| The five dishes affected | $1,913,000 |
And the number that changes the conversation: the input that rose most is not the one that moved cost most. On the bandeja de la casa, of the $650 the dish went up:
| Input | How much it rose | What it weighs in the bandeja | What it put into the $650 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground beef | +6.9% | $3,120 | $215 |
| Frying oil | +11.8% | $597 | $70 |
| Cargamanto beans | +6.1% | $990 | $60 |
| Chicharrón | +3.6% | $1,540 | $55 |
| The rest (rice, chorizo, egg, plantain) | — | $7,953 | $250 |
The oil rose almost twice as much as the beef and put in a third of what the beef put in. Raising the menu 11.8% "because the oil rose 11.8%" would have overcharged $4,300 on every bandeja: the dish moved 4.6%, not 11.8%.
② The two waves, and the dish that stays untouched
| Wave | Dish | Current price | Margin today | New price | New margin | Recovered per month | Week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sancocho de tres carnes | $38,000 | $24,980 | $38,500 | $25,480 | $380,000 | Week 1 |
| 1 | Posta a la criolla | $52,000 | $32,220 | $53,000 | $33,220 | $310,000 | Week 1 |
| 1 | Patacón con carne desmechada | $34,000 | $21,690 | $34,500 | $22,190 | $210,000 | Week 1 |
| 2 | Trucha al ajillo | $46,000 | $28,970 | $47,000 | $29,970 | $540,000 | Week 4 |
| — | Bandeja de la casa | $42,000 | $27,150 | untouched | — | $0 | — |
| Total recovered | $1,440,000 |
No new price breaks the menu's $72,000 ceiling or drops below its $28,000 floor, and rounding goes to $500 and $1,000, which is how this market charges.
The bandeja de la casa is the index dish and stays out of the plan. It is what the 30-to-45-year-old professional orders Tuesday through Friday and the price they know by heart; moving it turns a technical adjustment into news and drags the comparison across the rest of the menu. Its lost margin —$767,000 a month, the largest of the five— is not recovered with price. It is recovered from the other side of cost, or it is not recovered.
The arithmetic lands like this, and it gets written out in full because it is uncomfortable: of the $1,913,000 the menu lost per month, the two waves give back $1,440,000. $473,000 are missing, and they are the bandeja. Which is exactly the goal Sazón de Origen set itself this year: raise margin without raising menu prices. Here you raise where the guest does not compare, and the dish they do compare is defended on cost.
The commissioned channel stays untouched for now. The assistant does not assume the delivery platform's commission: it asks for it. Until that figure exists, wave 1 applies in the dining room and in own delivery, and the platform menu waits — because the same price leaves a different margin there, and applying the raise blind can give back half of what it promises.
SUPUESTO: no industry price elasticity is used here. The plan does not assume how many units are lost when you raise: it measures them. Wave 1 is applied and units and average check are counted for 4 weeks against the previous 4, same weekday against same weekday — the only yardstick Sazón de Origen has and the only one nobody will argue with. Until that measurement exists, the plan is written assuming zero unit loss, which is the optimistic assumption and is therefore declared. At a $500 raise, the sancocho can afford to lose up to 2.0% of its units before the raise stops being worth it; if it lost 1%, wave 1 recovers $186,000 rather than $380,000, and if it lost 3% the raise goes negative. That cut-off —not inflation— is what wave 1 is going to measure, and it is why wave 2 is not applied before the four weeks are up.
The full example has 1 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.