Midsummer House: Menu Development, Planning, Costing and Pricing

This report focuses on menu development, planning, and design, using Midsummer House restaurant in Cambridge, UK, as a case study. It explores key considerations for costing and pricing menus, including competitor pricing, ingredient seasonality, equipment costs, and labor costs. The report includes a detailed menu plan with ingredients and pricing, along with an analysis of menu costing and pricing approaches to maximize profitability. It also discusses the importance of consistent food quality and the use of menu engineering matrices. Different pricing methods, such as pricing by portion cost, raw item cost, competition, and demand analysis, are analyzed in relation to their impact on achieving greater profitability and sales. The report concludes that effective menu planning is essential for restaurants to provide better services and communicate offerings to customers.

Menu development, planning and
design (Task 2)

Table of content
 Introduction
 About company
 P3 Determining key considerations that can be taken into costing and pricing menus
 P4 producing accurate costed and priced menu for meeting range of customer requirements
 M4 Analysing approaches to menu costing and pricing and effective methods are used to
accurately costing and pricing menu for maximizing profitability.
 Conclusion

Introduction
The menu is referred as list of food items which involves
appetizer, beverages and deserts and comprises relative prices. In
toady’s the restaurant take use of picture of dishes and mentions
menu ingredient for serving to customers in electronic or physical
form. The menu planning is an systematic process which decides
type of food, drinks, target customer market and prices (Shen, and
et.al., 2019). The presentation is based on midsummer house
which covers key considerations that are taken in to account by
organisation for costing and pricing menu and menu plan that
contains all information and ingredient of restaurant menu.

About Company
Midsummer house which is an restaurant located in
Cambridge, England UK. It was an Victorian style
house transformed into restaurant. In 1998 Daniel
Clifford took over head chef and this restaurant is
owned by Russell Morgan. This restaurant offers
lunch and dinner meals with cuisines of French,
European and British.

P3 Determining key considerations that can be taken
into costing and pricing menus.
To earn desire level of profitability it becomes important for restaurant to determine
appropriate price level of food. The costing of menu in restaurant should be reasonable and fair in
terms of its affordability. Whereas the menu pricing needs to be equitable and profitable. The
midsummer restaurant maintains menu prices in accordance to customer affordability level and spends
customer limits. In development of effective menu, the costing and pricing plays an important role.
Following are the considerations taken by restaurant-
Price of competitors- The pricing strategy of competitor is measured and tracked by cost
manager of midsummer house restaurant that serves similar products and services in market. It is
required by restaurant to consider prices of competitive forms and adding some special offers that
can attract customers and providing attractive vouchers (Van Fan and et.al., 2020).

Continue…
 Price and seasonality of ingredients- In the midsummer house the pricing strategy was very low for
seasonal ingredients as restaurants grows core and raw ingredients in own farm which helps in
reducing supply cost. It also enables in establishing dishes price in reasonable and affordable level for
local customers. All this helps in attracting large base of customers and profitability.
 Equipment- Several factors are involved in costing and pricing of menu such as equipment cost,
working ad well as maintenance cost of these equipment’s. the equipment factor should be considered
by Midsummer house for enhancing organisational cost. the difference between cost & price of item
can be determined for measuring profitability margin of restaurant.
 Labour cost- It defines to wage and salary which is paid to employee of restaurant. It involves
several factors like payroll taxes, vaccination and other labour cost. All such factors are considered by
Midsummer house in costing and pricing menu.

Continue…
There are numerous allowances, benefits and facilities which is offered to restaurant for employees’
motivation to perform defined operations with efficiency and effectiveness that enhance overall cost of
business.
 Consistent food quality- In process of pricing menu it becomes important for restaurant to consider food
quality. The consistent quality food items in its menu of midsummer house will enhances the effectiveness
of items. As per the quality, restaurant should set high price of its food items that help business to generate
higher profitability and attract number of customers (Walker, J.R., 2021).
Menu engineering matrix
Menu engineering is measured as the important that determines that how menu is designed ,
positioned, priced and maintained for the purpose of improving the profitability ratio of restaurant. It is the
systematic process of studying sales and inventory data of restaurants.

P4 Producing accurate costed and priced menu for meeting
range of customer requirements.
A B C D E F G H I J
Menu Item
Total
Sold Menu Price
Portion
Cost
Food Cost
%
Portion
C.M.[1]
Total Food
Sales
Total Food
Cost Total C.M. C.M.%
Ham Sandwich 12 £10.95 £2.75 25.00% £8.20 £131.40 £33.00 £98.40 24.00%
Tuna Sandwich 8 £11.95 £4.25 36.00% £7.70 £95.60 £34.00 £61.60 15.00%
Salad 10 £6.95 £3.75 31.00% £8.20 £69.5 £21.5 £48 20.00%
Cheese Sandwich 5 £10.95 £3.50 32.00% £7.45 £54.75 £17.5 £37.25 9.00%
Crisps 4 £14.95 £5.25 35.00% £9.70 £59.80 £21.00 £38.80 9.00%
Veg. Lasagne 6 £12.95 £4.00 31.00% £8.95 £77.70 £24.00 £53.70 13.00%
Non veg. Lasagne
Veg Burger 5 £15.95 £7.25 45.00% £8.70 £79.75 36.25 £43.50 10.00%
Totals 50 £568.5 £151 £337.75

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Item
Total
Sold Menu Price
Portion
Cost
Food Cost
% Portion C.M.
Total Food
Sales
Total Food
Cost Total C.M. C.M.%
Cappuccino 31 £6.75 £1.93 28.59% £4.82 £59.83 £209.25 £149.42 4.63%
Cafe Latte 211 £6.75 £1.72 25.48% £5.03 £362.92 £1,424.25 £1,061.33 31.54%
Espresso 71 £6.95 £1.53 22.01% £5.43 £108.63 £493.45 £384.82 10.61%
Hot Chocolate 19 £7.50 £2.23 29.73% £5.27 £42.37 £142.50 £100.13 2.84%
Tea 78 £5.95 £1.55 26.05% £4.40 £120.90 £464.10 £343.20 11.66%
Cafe frappé 129 £6.45 £1.68 26.05% £4.77 £216.72 £832.05 £615.33 19.28%
Cold Coffee 130 £6.95 £1.76 25.32% £5.19 £228.80 £903.50 £674.70 19.43%
Total 669 ACM = £4.98 £1,140.70 £4,469.10 £3,328.93 100.00%

M2 Analyse approaches of menu costing and pricing
There are various costing and pricing methods used by the restaurant to determine costs
and set prices that force the restaurant towards the goal of greater profitability. There are different
approaches to pricing such as: pricing by portion cost, pricing by raw item cost of food and pricing
by competition, and demand analysis that help the restaurant in setting effective prices (Zawadzki,
and et.al., 2020). Midsummer house restaurant uses competitor prices, demand analysis and costs
that allow it to achieve the goals of greater profitability and sales.

Conclusion
It has been concluded that menu has prime role in restaurant and enables to offer better quality
services to customers. The restaurant conducts menu planning which is an essential process and
display dishes with its relative prices to customers. In the hospitality business menu is not only
prime method for communicating to customers what they have to sell but also an important for
directing and controlling business. The focus of menu development is on selecting dishes and
designing menu.

References
 Shen, and et.al., 2019. A review on supply chain contracting with information
considerations: information updating and information asymmetry. International Journal of
Production Research, 57(15-16), pp.4898-4936.
 Van Fan and et.al., 2020. Optimisation and process design tools for cleaner
production. Journal of Cleaner Production, 247, p.119181.
 Walker, J.R., 2021. The restaurant: from concept to operation. John Wiley & Sons.
 Zawadzki, and et.al., 2020. The Development and UI Design of an Interactive Game Map.
In The Digital Gaming Handbook (pp. 199-244). CRC Press.