An ingredient index is not a shopping list and it is not a purchase price. It reads the menu, which is where the ingredient becomes a commercial decision: a restaurant chooses which section to put it in, whether to name it in the dish title, and how much to charge above the same kind of dish without it.
The comparison is always made inside a menu section, never across the whole menu. A truffle starter is compared with starters that carry no truffle, not with main courses, because a difference between sections is a difference of course and not of ingredient.
The questions this answers
- How much does naming the ingredient add to a dish inside the same section?
- Where does a dish carrying it stand on its own menu, from the cheapest to the dearest?
- Does the addition change with the form the dish takes on the plate?
- Does it change with the price group of the restaurant?
What is inside the report
Described as structure. The values themselves are what you are buying.
The data behind it
A worked example of this format is published in full and free: The Truffle Index shows the placement table, the price pair behind every percentage and a withheld row exactly as they appear in a paid index.
Titles in this category
Who buys this
- Kitchens costing a single product. Which parts of the menu the product reaches, how many dishes a kitchen builds from it, and what the market adds for the name inside each of them.
- Executive chefs and menu developers. What the market charges above a plain version of the same dish, in the section they are actually writing.
- Groups reviewing a signature dish. Evidence that a product has a commercial position in this city, drawn from published menus rather than from what the trade says about it.
What MenuIndex does not do
- No aggregators. Delivery platforms, reservation sites, review portals and listing directories are excluded as sources. A menu published through those channels is edited for the channel and priced for a different margin, so it is not comparable with a dine-in menu.
- No restaurant is identified. Reports describe the market. No individual business is named, quoted or ranked, in the text, in a table or in an example.
- Nothing is estimated. A price is never inferred, modelled or filled in from a similar dish, and any breakdown drawn narrowly enough to point at one business is withheld rather than published.
- No advice. A report is market intelligence, not consultancy. It states what the market prints and leaves the decision where it belongs.
Prices are per report. A report with breakdowns covers the same subject broken down by cuisine, price level or licence. The scope of a strategic study is agreed before work starts. Full rules in the methodology.