You’ve survived the holiday crush, your food and labor costs have probably crept up, and your menu prices are often a season or two behind reality.

Repricing is uncomfortable, so it gets delayed. You tweak here, comp there, and hope volume will save you. It usually doesn’t.

A New Year reset is a natural moment to bring your menu back in line with actual costs and the experience you’re delivering. The key is to do it with intention instead of slapping on “a couple of bucks” across the board.

Start with what your menu really costs now

Before you touch a price, you need a current snapshot of plate cost. Otherwise you’re just guessing.

Pick your top sellers first: the dishes that drive volume and define who you are. For each one, pull:

• Current vendor prices on every ingredient
• Standard recipe quantities and yields
• Realistic portion sizes, not “ideal” ones from when you opened

Run the math and get a current food cost per plate. Do the same for your key beverages: house cocktails, by-the-glass wines, draft beers.

You don’t need to cost every single item before you move, but you do want to understand:

• Which items are margin heroes, quietly carrying the menu
• Which ones have drifted into “we’re basically giving this away” territory

That alone will change how you think about your pricing conversation.

Decide what “good” looks like before you raise a single price

If you skip this step, you’ll end up nudging numbers without a real target.

Align with your leadership team on a few simple questions:

• What’s our target food cost percentage overall, and on key categories?
• Are there items we’ll accept at a lower margin because they are true traffic drivers?
• Are there items that should be higher-margin to balance the mix?

Maybe you decide, for example, that core entrees should sit around a certain cost percentage, that a signature dish can be a little leaner because it’s your calling card, and that indulgent add-ons (extra toppings, premium sides, upgrades) will carry stronger margin.

Write that logic down. You’re not just “raising prices.” You’re moving the menu toward a clear economic shape.

Make it strategic, not reactionary

Across-the-board increases are easy, but they’re rarely the smartest move. Guests don’t notice a 3–4% change evenly; they notice where perceived value breaks.

Start with three types of adjustments:

1. Patch the obvious leaks.
   That entrée where the cost jumped 15% and the price never moved? The cocktail where the garnish now costs as much as the spirit pour? Fix those first. Bring them back into a sane margin range, even if it means a noticeable bump.
2. Nudge the middle.
   For solid, everyday items, smaller, more uniform increases often work: 50 cents here, a dollar there, especially on things where the perceived value is still strong.
3. Audit portion vs. price.
   In some cases, the problem isn’t the sticker; it’s the serving. If your plate looks generous enough to feed two, you may be able to slightly reduce portion size and adjust price, keeping value intact while protecting cost.

Be thoughtful about psychological thresholds. Jumping a beloved burger from $18 to $23 in one shot is going to be felt. Sometimes you’re better off pairing a price increase with a small value-add (better side, slight upgrade in product) or moving in two steps over a season.

Look at the menu holistically

Once you’ve made your draft changes, step back and view the menu as a guest would.

Questions to ask:

• Does the pricing ladder still make sense? Are there clear “good, better, best” steps in each category?
• Is there an obvious “hero” in each section that feels like a strong value, even after adjustments?
• Are you unintentionally pushing everything up so tightly that guests feel there’s no approachable option?

Think about anchoring. A couple of higher-priced, high-value items can make the rest of the menu feel reasonable. If all your entrees live in the same narrow band, guests have no price-based way to navigate.

This is also a good moment to quietly retire underperformers that are too expensive to make or too confusing to explain. Price changes land easier when the menu also gets a little sharper and more focused.

Bring your team into the “why,” not just the “what”

Servers, bartenders, and hosts are the ones who hear the first “Wow, that went up.” They need context.

Before you launch the updated menu, gather the team and explain:

• What’s changed and where (in plain language, not a spreadsheet)
• Why certain items moved more than others
• Where the strongest values are now, so they know what to recommend confidently

Give them language that feels honest and calm. Something like:

“We’ve updated a few prices for the New Year to keep up with ingredient, labor, and rent increases. We’ve focused on protecting portions and quality, and there are still great value options in every section.”

If staff believe the menu is still fair and intentional, they can stand behind it. If they feel blindsided, they’ll unconsciously apologize for your pricing, which is not where you want to be.

Launch and analyze

Recalibrating prices isn’t a one-and-done move. The first few weeks after a change tell you whether your theory holds up.

Track, even loosely:

• How your key items are selling relative to before
• Whether check averages move the way you expected
• If guests are suddenly migrating away from one specific dish because the price no longer feels right

Listen to what servers are hearing at the table. One or two comments aren’t data, but if everyone is suddenly getting pushback on the same item, that’s a signal.

You can always make small, targeted corrections: adjust one price down a touch, sweeten a value proposition, or rebalance how you talk about the menu. The point is to iterate, not to freeze.

Make it a rhythm

Repricing is hardest when you haven’t done it in years. Costs jump, your prices jump, and everybody feels it.

If you build a light pricing review into your annual or semiannual cadence, you’re doing gentle course corrections instead of emergency surgery. A New Year recalibration is a great anchor: look at your real costs, tune the menu, explain the changes, and monitor the impact.

Handled this way, price changes feel less like a shock and more purposeful: protecting margin so you can keep paying your team, sourcing good product, and cooking the food your guests actually love.