What Works in 2025: Restaurant Menu Pricing That Pays Off

Your costs, customers, and vibe aren’t a copy-paste of your competitor down the street. Pricing by gut or guesswork might feel fast. But it can quietly harm your margins or turn diners away.

This blog comes up with 5 proven pricing strategies used by food businesses in 2025, plus how to test, tweak, and win using smart insights from your POS.

What Exactly Is Restaurant Menu Pricing?

Restaurant menu pricing is more than just deciding a dollar amount for your dishes. So, is it just about covering costs and protecting your margins? Not quite. Smart menu pricing also considers:

• Customer perception: What do your customers believe your food is worth?
• Competitive positioning: Are you a premium restaurant or a budget-friendly burger joint?
• Operational costs: Rent, wages, packaging, utilities, and more.
• Sales data: Which items sell well? Which ones flop?
• Menu psychology: How pricing appears and feels to the customer.

When done right, restaurant menu pricing helps you:

• Increase average order value
• Sell more of your high-margin items
• Avoid leaving money on the table
• Encourage repeat visits
• Grow profitably, even in competitive markets

5 Menu Pricing Strategies That Actually Work in 2025

You don’t need to burn down your menu and start from scratch. These five strategies can be implemented gradually and optimized continuously, from anywhere, thanks to a cloud-based POS system. 

1. Bundle Pricing: Combine High-Demand Items to Boost Order Value

Bundle pricing means combining popular items into a set or “value meal” and offering it at a slightly lower price than if each item were bought individually.

Think “burger + fries + soda = $12 instead of $14” for your restaurant.

It’s a simple concept, but a powerful one.

The psychology behind bundling is that customers feel they’re getting more for less. Even if the discount is minimal, the perceived value is high.

You can also specifically recommend these dishes that you've “bundle-priced” to your diners. It simplifies decision-making, speeds up ordering, and increases average ticket size.

Here's how your restaurant POS system can help you implement it:

1. Identify the most commonly ordered combos. For example, tacos + chips, pizza + soda, salad + soup.
2. Create bundled menu items or combo deals. Highlight them as “Combo Meals,” “Lunch Deals,” or “Family Packs.”
3. Price them just low enough to feel like a deal, but not so low that you hurt your margins.

QSR POS helps track bundle performance:

• Are they increasing the average order value?
• Are customers choosing bundles over individual items?
• Which components are being subbed or modified?

Adjust based on what sells best. Try alternate versions, limited-time bundles, or even premium bundles for larger groups.

2. Value-Based Pricing: Charge What It’s Worth to the Customer

Instead of pricing based strictly on cost + markup, value-based pricing asks: “What is this item worth to my customer?” It is about pricing high-quality, unique, or signature items based on customer perception, not just ingredients.

This restaurant menu pricing strategy works because not all dishes are created equal in the customer’s eyes. For example, they’ll happily pay more for something that feels gourmet, like a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich with garlic aioli and hand-cut fries. But they might hesitate at a $9 side salad.

Value-based pricing helps you price confidently, especially for items that:

• Use premium ingredients
• Are hard to find elsewhere
• Are crowd favorites with loyal repeat orders

Once you implement this strategy, here’s how you can measure its impact:

• Customer Feedback and Restaurant Reviews: What do they rave about?
• Repeat Orders: What’s getting reordered week after week?
• Competitor Benchmarking: Are similar restaurants charging more for the same quality?
• Presentation & Perception: Can you justify a higher price with better plating, unique names, or premium descriptors?

For example, instead of “Grilled Cheese - $5,” try “Artisan Cheddar Melt with Garlic Butter Brioche - $8.” Same base dish. Higher perceived value.

Use POS analytics data to spot items with:

• High sales volume
• Frequent repeat orders
• Low refund or complaint rates

These are strong candidates for premium pricing. Test small increases, like $0.50 here, $1 there, and measure the impact.

3. Item Placement and Menu Engineering

You've to direct your customer’s attention to the items you want them to notice… and buy. Menu engineering is the art and science of placing and presenting items to maximize profits.

People don’t read menus like novels. They scan. Customers’ eyes are naturally drawn to The Golden Triangle: the top right corner, the center, and the top left. This is where your most profitable dishes should go.

Here’s how to implement this pricing strategy for your restaurant menu:

• Highlight high-margin items with callouts like “Chef’s Favorite,” “Best Seller,” or “Customer Favorite.”
• Use visual cues like boxes, icons, bold fonts, or color blocks.
• Group strategically. Put premium items with appealing descriptions in the hotspots of your menu.
• Limit choices. Too many options can be overwhelming. A trimmed-down menu often leads to faster decisions and higher sales.

Use your POS to look at your sales data and ask:

• Which high-margin items aren’t selling well?
• Are some low-margin items selling too much and hurting profits?

Rework your menu based on that insight. Reposition underperforming winners, reword bland item names, or test layout changes. You can even A/B test physical menus or digital menu screens and compare results.

4. Decoy Pricing: Bring Customers to What You Want Them to Buy

In decoy pricing, you intentionally place a higher-priced item on your menu to make your mid-tier (target) item look like a better deal.

You’re not necessarily trying to sell the decoy. You’re using it to guide customers toward the option you do want them to choose.

This restaurant menu pricing strategy works because humans are wired to compare. When they see three price points, they often choose the middle option. It feels safe. Not too cheap or too extravagant.

Here's an example. Let’s say you sell a premium sandwich:

• Option A: Grilled Veggie Panini – $9
• Option B: Grilled Veggie Panini + Tomato Basil Soup – $14 (your target)
• Option C: Grilled Veggie Panini + Tomato Basil Soup + Quinoa Salad + Vegan Brownie – $21 (decoy)

Customers are likely to go with Option B because it feels like great value compared to Option C.

Decoy pricing works especially well in:

• Wine lists or cocktail menus
• Platters or combo options
• Upsell add-ons, like extra protein and dessert pairings

After you introduce a decoy, monitor your POS data:

• Are more people ordering the mid-tier option?
• Has the average check value increased?
• Are decoy items getting ignored (as expected)?

Tweak pricing and combinations until you hit the sweet spot.

5. Dynamic Testing with POS Data: Stop Guessing, Start Adjusting

With an all-in-one POS system, you can test, adjust, and refine your prices based on actual customer behavior. This is dynamic pricing.

Menu pricing shouldn’t be a guessing game. Your POS data tells you:

• What sells and what doesn’t
• Which items are ordered together
• What times people are buying specific dishes
• How pricing changes impact sales volume and profit

To implement this restaurant menu pricing strategy, start testing small:

• A/B test prices for the same item on different days or shifts.
• Test different price points for your best-selling items after identifying them.
• Raise prices during peak footfall hours, like lunch rush and weekends.
• Offer deals during slow periods, like late afternoons and midweek.

Monitor how those changes affect sales, profit per item, and total revenue.

Price Your Menu Way Better With OneHubPOS 

Menu pricing is one of the biggest levers you can pull to increase profits without changing your food or service, with:

• Bundle pricing, where you drive up order value by offering value-based combos
• Value-based pricing, where you charge based on what the item is worth to your customer
• Menu engineering, where placement and design can boost high-margin item sales
• Decoy pricing, where you guide choices using price comparison psychology
• Dynamic testing with POS data, where you continuously improve using real-time insights

Don't overhaul your entire menu overnight. Just choose one or two of these strategies. Implement. Test. Iterate. Book a demo with OneHubPOS and see how data-backed pricing does wonders.