Setting delivery prices using your sales history, events and time slots

Raising delivery prices is scary: you fear losing orders. Yet not raising them is costly, between rising ingredient costs and platform commissions. The right answer is neither "raise everything" nor "change nothing": it's adjusting dish by dish, at the right time, based on your own data.

What your history already knows

Every recorded order is a piece of information: which dish, which price, which day, which time, which platform. Over several months, this history answers precise questions:

• When did I change this dish's price, and what happened to sales afterwards?
• In which time slots does this dish sell best?
• Did my sales move during an event (match, holidays, local festival, weather)?
• At what point in the week am I really profitable?

The history still needs to be centralised: if your sales are scattered across several tablets, several statements and the POS, the analysis becomes a headache.

Step 1: know each dish's margin, by channel

A price is judged against the margin. For each dish:

1. calculate its cost price (ingredients, packaging);
2. subtract the commission of the platform concerned;
3. compare the resulting margin by channel: dine-in, takeaway, each platform, direct sales.

A dish that's profitable in the dining room can be much less so in delivery. That's often where the first adjustments are hiding.

Step 2: review your past price changes

Go back over the latest price changes and compare sales before and after, over comparable periods (same days of the week, outside holidays). Three cases come up:

• sales hold: the dish could take the increase;
• sales dip slightly but total margin rises: the increase is still a win;
• sales plummet: the price crossed a psychological threshold, you need to roll back or rework the offer.

Step 3: take events and time slots into account

A drop in sales isn't always about price. Before drawing conclusions, check the context: school holidays, a big match, heatwaves, roadworks in the area. Also cross-check your sales by time slot: a dish can be in high demand at lunch and barely profitable in the evening, or the other way round.

This time-slot reading answers a key question: when is my restaurant profitable, and when isn't it? It guides prices as much as opening hours on the platforms.

Step 4: adjust in small steps

A few proven principles:

• one adjustment at a time, so you can measure its effect;
• moderate increases on the most popular dishes rather than a general increase;
• consistent prices across platforms, with a deliberate gap if commissions differ;
• a single menu to apply the change everywhere at once, without forgetting a platform.

For building the menu itself, see also menu engineering for delivery.

What AI changes

Doing this work by hand takes time and rigour. An AI agent connected to your data can do it continuously: track each dish's price history, spot when an increase or decrease had an effect, cross-check with events and time slots, then suggest adjustments.

That's the role of the Pepprio AI agent. Connected via MCP to your tablet, your POS, your platforms and your history, it analyses your menus, orders and prices and suggests improvements — the final decision stays yours. It only accesses your restaurant's data, in line with the GDPR.

In short

1. Centralise your sales to have a reliable history.
2. Think in terms of margin per dish and per channel.
3. Review the effect of your past price changes.
4. Take events and time slots into account before drawing conclusions.
5. Adjust in small steps and apply them everywhere via a single menu.