Restaurant · Guide · Updated July 2026

How to Price Your Restaurant Menu Using Average Order Value (AOV)

Pricing your menu by feel or by copying competitors is how you end up busy but broke. The right way is to calculate the average order value (AOV) your business needs, then build your menu around that number.

This is the approach taught in Module 4 of the Profitable Restaurant Owner Academy, and the worked example below makes the math concrete.

What Is Average Order Value and Why Does It Matter?

Average order value is how much each customer spends at your restaurant, on average. Think about McDonald’s: one customer orders a Big Mac, another grabs an ice cream, a third buys a smoothie. When you average across every customer who walks through the door, you get a single dollar figure. That is your AOV.

Getting this number wrong in either direction causes real problems.

If your AOV is too low, you need massive volume to survive. At 720 Sweets, I opened a location inside Metropolis at Metrotown, one of the busiest malls in Vancouver. We could price items at two dollars because thousands of people walked past every day. That volume made a two-dollar AOV work. Take that same two-dollar price point to a standalone shop where people have to drive ten or twenty minutes, and you have a very hard business on your hands. The foot traffic simply is not there to compensate.

If your AOV is too high for your location, you face the opposite wall. A hundred-dollar steak-and-wine experience does not work in a neighborhood where the average customer either cannot afford it or has no reason to make the trip.

Knowing your required AOV lets you build a menu that actually matches your revenue needs and your customer base.

How Do You Calculate Operating Days Per Month?

You cannot just divide your monthly revenue target by 30. Every month has slow days, busy days, and days you are closed. Treating them all the same gives you a distorted picture.

Here is the framework:

• Normal days count as 1.0 each.
• Busy days count as 1.5 each, because you should be making more on those days.
• Rest days (days off) are subtracted at 1.0 each.

Add up your normal days, add your adjusted busy-day count, then subtract your off days. The result is your operating days for the month.

Which days are your busy days depends entirely on your concept. A restaurant catering to office workers will be busiest Monday through Friday and slow on weekends. A bait shop near the water will be packed on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Know your customer, then map your calendar accordingly.

Ben’s Burger in action: Ben is open Tuesday through Friday (normal days), Saturday and Sunday (busy days), and closed on Mondays. In a 30-day month his calendar breaks down like this:

• 18 normal days x 1.0 = 18
• 8 busy days x 1.5 = 12
• 4 rest days x 1.0 = subtract 4

18 + 12 minus 4 = 26 operating days.

How Do You Find Your Projected Revenue Per Operating Day?

Once you have your operating days, the calculation is straightforward.

Projected monthly revenue divided by operating days equals projected revenue per operating day.

Ben’s Burger has a projected monthly revenue of $24,500 (established in an earlier lesson when we worked through fixed and variable expenses). Divide $24,500 by 26 operating days and you get $942.31 per day. That is the daily revenue target Ben has to hit to reach his monthly goal.

How Do You Split That Daily Target Between Lunch and Dinner?

Not all meals are equal. Lunch checks are almost always lower than dinner checks. The ratio depends on your concept.

A Chipotle-style counter-service spot might run a 1-to-1 ratio because a burrito costs roughly the same at noon as it does at 7 p.m. A full-service restaurant where customers order burgers at lunch and steaks at dinner might run closer to 1-to-2. Fine dining can stretch to 1-to-3.

Ben’s Burger uses a 1-to-2 ratio. Lunch averages around $10, dinner around $20. To split the daily target by that ratio, divide by the sum of the ratio (1 + 2 = 3):

• $942.31 divided by 3 = $314.10 per ratio unit
• Lunch target = 1 x $314.10 = $314.10
• Dinner target = 2 x $314.10 = $628.20

Those are the session revenue targets Ben needs to hit each operating day.

How Do You Turn Session Revenue Into a Per-Person Menu Price?

Now divide each session revenue target by the number of seats you have, assuming one full turn per session. Ben has 30 seats. To be conservative, we only plan for one lunch rush and one dinner rush, meaning each seat turns once per session.

• Lunch: $314.10 divided by 30 seats = $10.47 per person
• Dinner: $628.20 divided by 30 seats = $20.94 per person

Those are your required AOVs. For Ben to hit $24,500 a month, every lunch customer needs to spend an average of $10.47 and every dinner customer needs to spend an average of $20.94.

Now you have something concrete to build a menu around. If your burger, fries, and drink combo lands at $9.50, you are short. You either need to add an upsell (a dessert, a premium drink, a side upgrade) or raise your base price. If your dinner combo is sitting at $18, same story. The math tells you exactly where the gap is.

Why Being Conservative With Seat Turns Protects You

Counting on multiple seat turns per session to hit your numbers is a trap. You might turn your dinner section twice on a Saturday night in December. You will not do that on a Tuesday in February. Planning around one turn per session gives you a floor, not a fantasy.

If you exceed one turn, the extra revenue is upside. If you plan around two turns and only get one, you miss your month.

A Note on Location Versus Pricing

This whole exercise only works if your required AOV is realistic for your trade area. If the math says you need a $35 dinner AOV but you are in a fast-casual strip mall where customers expect to spend $14, the menu math will not save you. The mismatch is a concept problem, not a pricing problem.

Run this calculation before you sign your lease. If the AOV your location demands is out of step with what your market will pay, change the concept or change the location.

The Bottom Line

Price your menu by working backwards from your revenue goal, not by copying what the place down the street charges. Calculate your operating days, find your daily revenue target, split it by session using your lunch-to-dinner ratio, then divide by seats. The number you land on is your required AOV per customer. Build every menu item, combo, and upsell to hit that number. As the saying goes: busy does not pay the rent, the average check does.

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