Creating a Menu and Calculating Sales Prices

Details: Running a café

Photo by loufre on Pixabay

The business idea and the location of the café are set – but how to create a suitable and attractive offer for your guests? The design of the café menu and also food and beverages offered might be determined by your business idea, i.e. Vienna style café or vegan style. However, you have to make some important decisions on style, range of offer and sales prices.

In this quest, there is useful information that you will consider for creating the menu and calculating the prices. These decisions are essential to make your café a successful business.

Task

Photo by Volkshochschule im Landkreis Cham e.V.

The nice location of the café, e.g. next to a famous monument in the city centre, is very important. However, you have to attract guests that will come more than only once.

The range of offers and the prices for food and beverages are a key issue for your guests. They will only spend money in your café when they enjoy the setting, like the meals and beverages and consider the price reasonable.

You have the task:

to set up food and beverages for a menu,
to create an attractive layout,
to calculate the sales prices,
to run the café for a week – then make a first calculation on your sales and costs.

Process

Creating a menu and calculating sales prices is a complex task to fulfil. This step-by-step approach will guide you through:

Go to the resources section and find the document called ‘Process: Menu’ to start with. Follow the instructions, get more ideas and inspiration for your café’s menu.

Go to the resources section and find the document called ‘Process: Sales Price’. It will help you to understand sales price calculation with a Case Study involving the calculation for a rich cake.

There are website links and videos that will help you to understand more about menus and sales prices in cafés.

Conclusion

Making money with a café requires financial & economic literacy in entrepreneurship. It is not enough just to be a smart barista but you have to know whether this special cup of coffee brings you profit or loss by the end of the month. Not simply trust on your gut when it comes to menu conception and price calculation. Copying the sales prices of other competitors is also not a good solution.

Set up your own individual menu with calculations based on your business figures and be sure that you will manage your café successfully.

Learning Outcomes

Competence Area 1: IDEAS & OPPORTUNITIES