A higher ticket medio feels like good news. The till shows more per cover and the summer looks better on paper. But the till only tells you what guests paid. It does not tell you what you kept.
A lot of the advice on "aumentar facturación restaurante" stops at revenue: sell more, raise the average, fill the terrace. That is half the job. The other half is checking that the things your team suggests most actually leave money behind once you pay for the ingredients. November, with the season closed and the invoices still on the desk, is the right time to do that check.
Revenue per cover and profit per cover are different numbers
Revenue per cover is the simple one: net sales divided by the number of guests. Profit per cover is harder, so use a version you can work out on one sheet of paper. Call it contribution per cover: for every item sold, take the price without IVA, subtract what the item costs you to put on the table, add it all up and divide by covers.
That leaves out rent, wages and electricity, which you pay whether the table orders dessert or not. That is the point. When a server suggests one more item, the fixed costs do not move. Only the ingredient cost does. So the question for each suggestion is: how many euros does this item add after IVA and after what it costs to make?
Strip the IVA first
Your menu prices include IVA. In Spain, restaurant services and the supply of food and drink for consumption on the spot fall under the reduced 10% rate, according to the Agencia Tributaria's IVA manual. Takeaway and retail sales can follow different rules. That 10% is not yours, so take it out before you calculate anything.
The quick way: divide the menu price by 1.10. A €12 gin-tonic is €10.91 to you. A €2 coffee is €1.82. Skip this step and every margin you calculate looks better than it is, and the expensive items flatter you the most. Check how the rates apply to your own business with your gestor; this is general information, not tax advice.
The check: your ten most-suggested items
You do not need to cost the whole menu to learn something useful. Start with the items your floor team pushes most often. On most Mallorca floors they are some mix of the first drink, the large bottle of water, a starter for the table, the fish of the day or premium cut, a bottle of wine, dessert, coffee, and a digestivo after lunch.
- Pull the product mix from your till for the season, or at least July and August. Your POS should have a sales-by-item report. Note how many of each item you sold.
- Write the menu price and divide by 1.10. That is your net price.
- Cost one portion from your supplier invoices. For a drink, that is the pour plus the mixer, ice and garnish. For a dish, the ingredients on the plate at what you actually paid this year, not what you paid when you wrote the menu.
- Subtract cost from net price. That is the contribution in euros per item.
- Rank the list by euros, not by percentage. You bank euros.
That last point matters. A coffee can run a very high margin percentage and still only leave you a euro and a half. A bottle of wine can carry a lower percentage and leave you fifteen. Both are worth suggesting, but you need to know which is which.
A worked hypothetical
These numbers are invented for illustration, for a restaurant with a terrace near the port. They are not benchmarks. Your prices and costs will be different; the method is what counts.
| Item | Menu price | Net of 10% IVA | Cost per portion | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arroz negro (per person) | €18.00 | €16.36 | €5.00 | €11.36 |
| Arroz caldoso de bogavante (per person) | €34.00 | €30.91 | €17.00 | €13.91 |
| Large bottle of water | €3.50 | €3.18 | €0.70 | €2.48 |
| House dessert (almond cake) | €7.00 | €6.36 | €1.50 | €4.86 |
| Coffee | €2.00 | €1.82 | €0.25 | €1.57 |
| Gin-tonic, premium gin | €12.00 | €10.91 | €3.65 | €7.26 |
| Bottle of local red | €28.00 | €25.45 | €9.00 | €16.45 |
Look at the rice. Upgrading a guest from arroz negro to the lobster rice adds €16 to the bill. It adds €2.55 to what you keep. The ticket medio jumps and the business is barely better off. If one portion of lobster, costing €17 in this example, gets thrown away at the end of a quiet Tuesday, that one loss wipes out the extra contribution from six upgrades.
Two servers, same table, different result
Take a table of four British guests at lunch. Two servers each sell roughly the same amount extra on top of the basic order.
Server A talks two of them into the lobster rice instead of arroz negro. Extra on the bill: €32. Extra contribution: two times €2.55, so €5.10.
Server B leaves the mains alone. She asks "still or sparkling, large bottle for the table?" and sells two, brings the dessert menu back and sells two almond cakes, and gets four coffees. Extra on the bill: €29. Extra contribution: €4.96 for the water, €9.72 for the desserts and €6.28 for the coffees, so €20.96.
Server A raised the ticket more. Server B's suggestions left the restaurant about four times as much. If you only track revenue per cover by server, you will praise the wrong person, and you will train the whole team to chase the big-ticket upgrade.
This does not mean never suggest the lobster. A guest celebrating something wants it, and a good server should offer it. It means the premium dish should not be the main tool, and its price may need another look. If your contribution on it is only €2.55 more than the cheaper rice, either the cost has crept up since you priced it or it was priced for show.
What usually hides in the numbers
- Old costings. Plenty of menus are costed once, when they are written, and never again. Recost the items you sell most with this season's invoices.
- Waste on premium items. Fish of the day, shellfish and aged beef are common upsells, and expensive losses when they do not sell. A suggestion only pays if the item actually sells before it spoils.
- Heavy pours. If your gin-tonic is costed at a 50 ml pour and the bar free-pours closer to 70 ml, you are giving away around 40% more gin than you priced for. Measure at the bar for a week and see.
- Comps and discounts. The free chupito, the "sorry for the wait" dessert, the round on the house for regulars. All fine in moderation, but they come straight off contribution.
- Kitchen time. A dish that ties up a cook for fifteen minutes on a full Saturday night can slow every other table. Keep it in mind when you rank items, even if you do not put a number on it.
Turn it into one line for the team
When the costing is done, do not hand the staff a spreadsheet. Give them the answer: the five or six suggestions that leave the most euros per sale and are easy to say at the table. On many menus that list turns out to be drinks, water, wine, a house dessert and coffee, because they often carry a strong margin and cost the kitchen little time. Check that against your own numbers before you brief the team.
Then change what you measure. Keep tracking ticket medio, because it is the number you can see daily from the till. But once a month, run the same product-mix report and work out contribution per cover. If the ticket goes up and contribution per cover does not, you are selling the wrong things, or selling the right things at the wrong price.
Before you set next season's prices
Do this check before you reprint the menu. It will show you which items to suggest harder, which prices to fix and which premium dishes are mostly there to look good. A higher ticket medio is worth having. A higher ticket medio built on items that leave real money behind is worth a lot more.