How to price menu items: the formula, worked examples and delivery-app prices

To price a menu item, divide what one plate costs you to make by the food cost percentage you want. A cheeseburger that costs $3.50 to make, at a 30% food cost, needs a price of $11.67, so $11.99 on the menu before sales tax. Then check the dollars each dish leaves you (its contribution margin), and set a separate price for every channel that charges a fee. At a 25% commission, the same burger needs about $16.99 on DoorDash or Uber Eats to leave you the same money as a dine-in plate.

What is the formula for pricing a menu item?

The standard formula is the food cost percentage method:

Menu price = plate cost ÷ target food cost %

• Plate cost is what every ingredient on the plate costs you, including the garnish, the sauce, the bun and the fries. Cost it from a recipe card with the recipe cost calculator.
• Target food cost % is the share of the price you are willing to spend on ingredients. There is no official target. The National Restaurant Association's survey of more than 900 US restaurants found a median food and drink cost of 32.0% of sales for full-service restaurants and 32.4% for limited-service in 2024. Read food cost percentage for how to set yours.

The same formula works backward. If the market won't pay more than $14 for a dish, multiply by your target: at 30%, the plate can cost $4.20 at most.

Worked example: three dishes, one target

A neighborhood restaurant aims for a 30% food cost and rounds prices up to the next .99. These are illustrative costs.

Rounding up keeps every dish at or under the target. The menu price calculator does this for a whole menu, starts in US dollars for US visitors, and rounds up to .99.

Why food cost % isn't the whole answer: contribution margin

Food cost % tells you the share. Contribution margin tells you the dollars: price minus plate cost. You pay rent and wages with dollars, not percentages.

The ribeye has the worst food cost % and the best contribution margin. Pricing it down to 30% ($42.67) might sell far fewer steaks. So:

• Use food cost % to set a starting price, then check the dollars each dish leaves.
• Don't cut a high-margin dish just because its percentage looks high.
• Feature dishes with both good margins and good sales. Put them where the eye lands first and describe them well. This is the idea behind menu engineering: sort dishes by how well they sell and how much each one leaves.

How much should you charge on DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub?

Delivery apps take a commission on each order, so the same price leaves you less. To keep the same money, raise the app price:

App price = (dine-in price before tax + packaging) ÷ (1 − commission %)

The US rates on each app's own pricing page, read 25 September and checked again 20 October 2026:

Here is the cheeseburger from the example, with $0.50 of packaging and every price rounded up to the next .99. "You keep" is what's left after the fee and packaging.

Three things to watch:

1. Pickup rates depend on matching prices. DoorDash's 6% and Uber Eats' 7% pickup rates apply when your app pickup prices match your in-store prices. Uber charges 10% on pickup otherwise.
2. Check your agreement. The apps let you set your own menu prices, but read the pricing terms in your contract. See can I charge higher prices on delivery apps?
3. Raise by percentage, not a flat amount. A flat $2 covers a 25% commission on a $6 side but not on a $30 entrée.

Full fee details: DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub.

Your own ordering page is the cheapest channel after the counter

On your own website, the only fee is card processing. Stripe's standard US rate for online cards is 2.9% + 30¢. That's why the cheeseburger needs only $12.99 online against $16.99 on a 25% app plan, and you keep the customer's details.

Menuthere's ordering page charges 0% commission on every plan. The Free plan takes up to 50 orders a month; card payments through your own Stripe account start on Lite. See online ordering for US restaurants.

Price your direct orders lower than the apps and still keep more.

Create your free ordering page

Price psychology: what the research actually shows

Plenty of menu "tricks" are repeated without evidence. One that has a study behind it:

• Leave out the dollar sign. In a Cornell study of 201 diners at the Culinary Institute of America, guests whose menus showed prices as plain numbers (12, not $12.00 or "twelve dollars") spent more, on average $5.55 or about 8%. The authors linked dollar signs to the "pain of paying".

Common practice, but not proven by a study we could find:

• Endings. US menus often end prices in .99, .95 or .49, or use whole numbers at the high end. Pick one style and use it everywhere.
• Small, steady increases. Re-cost your top dishes every quarter and move a few prices a little, rather than the whole menu at once.

How to price your menu, step by step

1. Cost every plate: list each ingredient with its cost per portion, and add it up.
2. Pick a target food cost %: start near 30% and adjust for the dish and your concept.
3. Divide: plate cost ÷ target % gives the price before sales tax. Round up.
4. Check the dollars: price − plate cost. Keep high-margin dishes even when their percentage is high.
5. Price each channel: add packaging and divide by (1 − the app's commission) for delivery apps, and add the card fee for your own website.
6. Review every quarter: re-cost your top 10 dishes when supplier prices move.

Sales tax is added on the bill in most of the US, so menu prices are usually shown before tax; see sales tax on restaurant food. If you add a card surcharge instead of building the fee into your prices, check the card surcharge rules in your state.

To see what your prices add up to, check your month with the restaurant profit margin calculator or read restaurant profit margins. For a quick budget check, see the 30/30/30/10 rule.