By Landon Taylor Nelson

In most restaurants, the menu is treated like art. It reflects a chef’s vision, a brand’s personality, and a guest’s expectations. Yet the truth is less romantic. A menu is first and foremost a financial document, one that determines whether the operation thrives or quietly bleeds out. Far too many restaurants fail not because their food is bad but because their math is.

Restaurant coach David Scott Peters has spent his career urging operators to replace intuition with information. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” he often says, a phrase that feels almost cliché until you watch how many owners make pricing decisions by guesswork. They look at competitors, adjust by feel, or chase what seems fair. The result is a menu that may look appealing but quietly erodes profit plate by plate.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

– David Scott Peters

The foundation of sound pricing is accurate costing. Every dish must have a clear recipe cost that accounts for yield, waste, and portion size. Anything less is a guess. Peters insists that operators track what he calls ideal food cost—the cost in a perfect world where portions are precise and waste is zero—alongside actual food cost, the reality of daily operations. The difference between the two tells a story. It reveals where systems fail, where accountability slips, and where money vanishes. In most restaurants, that gap is larger than anyone wants to admit.

When you begin to measure, patterns emerge. You discover that some of your “best sellers” may actually be your worst performers. An entrée with a 25 percent food cost might seem safe until you calculate its contribution margin and realize it earns less profit than a higher-cost dish that sells twice as often. Peters argues that percentage targets can be misleading because they hide the real metric that matters: dollars of profit per sale.

This analytical approach does not diminish the creativity of cooking or hospitality. In fact, it protects it. The discipline of measurement gives freedom to make informed decisions rather than emotional ones. When you know exactly what each menu item contributes, you can experiment confidently, adjust pricing rationally, and reward staff who help control waste.

“Systems don’t create bureaucracy. They create freedom.”

– David Scott Peters

The shift from emotional to empirical thinking requires humility. Many owners resist it because the numbers expose uncomfortable truths. Yet once that resistance fades, a new kind of clarity appears. You begin to see the restaurant not as a daily struggle for survival but as a system that can be tuned, improved, and trusted.

The path to profitability is not mysterious. It begins with counting: every ounce, every hour, every dollar. When operators commit to that level of awareness, menu pricing stops being guesswork and becomes stewardship. The numbers are not the enemy of creativity; they are its foundation. Knowing them is not optional.