Before a single price is set, a menu is a structure: a number of sections, in an order, with a length. That structure is a market convention, and departing from it is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by accident.
The report is built on the headings restaurants print. Where a restaurant uses a heading of its own, the section keeps that heading rather than being forced into one of ours, and the grouping rule is printed beside every table.
menus indexed in full1,937
CollectionContinuous
AvailabilityOn request
The questions this answers
- How far does our menu stretch from its cheapest main course to its dearest?
- How does that stretch compare with menus in our own price group?
- How are the courses priced against one another here, and are we in line?
- Does the shape of the menu change as the price group rises?
What is inside
How far the menu stretchesThe distance from the cheapest main course to the dearest on the same menu, and how that distance changes from one price group to the next.
Ratios between coursesHow much more a main course costs than a starter, a dessert or a side, read inside each menu and reported as the middle menu.
Where the ceiling sitsHow far the top of a section stands above its middle, which is what makes everything below it look reasonable.
Vocabulary as printedThe words the market uses for its own sections, so a comparison is between sections that mean the same thing.
Methodology note and appendixGrouping rules printed beside every table, plus the structured data.
Why this one
Commissioned before a menu is written rather than after, and used by groups deciding what to standardise across sites.
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.
This title sits in Menu Engineering & Pricing. Full rules in the methodology.