
Webinar/Podcast
How to Win the Menu Pricing Game (Without Losing Customers)
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As a restaurant owner, you know that rising costs are inevitable. Whether it's the cost of food, labor, or rent, your expenses are always going up. At some point, you may reach a point where you can no longer afford to operate at your current prices. When that happens, you'll need to raise your menu prices.
Raising prices is never an easy decision. You don't want to scare away your customers, but you also need to make sure that you're covering your costs.
In this webinar, we'll present industry-proven best practices for how to raise menu prices without losing customers.
Some of the topics we'll cover include:
- Menu pricing formula – cost divided by perceived value
- Do your research - how to research the market and see what your competition is charging
- Transparency – learn how to communicate price increases in a clear and concise way
- Service excellence – why customer service improvements increase perceived value
- Change portion sizes – practical tips on how to rearrange and re-portion your menu offerings
- Dropping the losers – how to use your POS sales mix report to identify unpopular and unprofitable menu items
- New menu items – how new menu offerings help overshadow a general price increase
About the Presenters:

Joe Erickson
Joe Erickson is the Chief Operations Officer and product developer for RestaurantOwner.com. He has owned and/or managed several restaurant/catering operations. He started his career by developing Luther's Catering, a division of the Luther's BBQ chain, in Houston. He was also a partner and co-founder of Sunset Dinner Cruises and was the founding partner of Bobby Mac's, a casual, full service restaurant in Kerrville. He later helped to develop a southwestern bistro, Nicole's Cafe San Felipe, and was managing partner for the original Truluck's Steak and Stone Crab, which now has 11 locations throughout the U.S. Joe is focused primarily on developing easy-to-implement, yet highly effective systems and processes to help our members improve their restaurants' efficiency, product utilization and most importantly, deliver a more consistent guest experience.

Jim Laube
Jim is the founder and CEO of RestaurantOwner.com. He has a diverse 30-year career in the restaurant industry that includes various staff positions, manager, controller, CPA and advisor to hundreds of independents throughout the U.S. and Canada. Jim is a popular restaurant industry speaker and seminar leader whose clients include the National Restaurant Association, Pizza Expo, SYSCO, Food Services of America, Gordon Foodservice, the New York Restaurant Association, Walt Disney and Papa John's.
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Attendee Questions & Comments
Question 1: What was the most valuable idea or insight you received?
Question 2: What is the #1 thing that you will try or do differently because of the webinar?
Question 3: Did you notify your customers of a price increase in advance? How did you notify them?