For years, pricing in hospitality has been treated as something we do to the business, rather than something the business knows how to do.
A couple of times a year, usually under pressure, we gather around spreadsheets, debate percentage points, argue about psychology, and eventually land on a set of changes that feel big, risky, and emotionally charged. Then we push the button everywhere, brace ourselves, and hope the damage is contained.
That approach made a certain amount of sense when costs were stable, demand was predictable, and menus changed slowly. It makes far less sense now.
We’re operating in a world of permanent volatility: labour costs moving, food inflation uneven, consumer confidence shifting month to month, and competition just a swipe away. In that environment, pricing can’t be a defensive reaction. It has to become a core organisational capability.
And the organisations that treat it that way will materially outperform those that don’t.
The problem isn’t courage. It’s structure.
When pricing conversations stall, it’s rarely because leadership lacks conviction. More often, it’s because the only tools available turn pricing into a binary bet.
If the only way to change price is to do it everywhere, all at once, with no clean way to isolate impact or unwind decisions, then of course pricing becomes fraught. The blast radius is enormous. The downside risk is opaque. And the learning is minimal.
So we compensate with process, committees, and conservatism.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: large, infrequent pricing changes are riskier than small, frequent ones.
They feel decisive, but they’re blunt instruments. They bundle dozens of assumptions together and make it impossible to know which ones were right.
Retail learned this lesson decades ago. We don’t need to repeat the journey.
Other consumer-facing sectors went through this transition years ago. They stopped asking, “What should the price be?” and started asking, “What are we trying to learn?”
That shift matters.
Because once pricing is framed as a learning system rather than a one-off decision, behaviour changes:
- Prices are tested, not declared
- Assumptions are written down, not implied
- Success is measured in outcomes, not sentiment
Most importantly, pricing stops being personal. It becomes analytical, repeatable, and cumulative.
What this looks like in practice
This isn’t about turning every restaurant manager into a data scientist, or flooding the business with micro-decisions. It’s about setting the right intent and guardrails at the top.
At a leadership level, pricing as a capability means a few simple but powerful shifts:
1. We always start with a hypothesis
Not “let’s put 5% on mains,” but “If we do X, we expect Y to change, because Z.” That discipline alone dramatically improves decision quality.
2. We separate learning from rollout
Testing is not the same thing as committing. Not every price change is meant to scale.
3. We define success before we begin
Sometimes success is margin. Sometimes it’s participation. Sometimes it’s perception. But it’s never “revenue went up so we’re happy.”
4. We protect the operation
Customer sentiment, kitchen throughput, refunds, if these break, the test stops. Full stop.
None of this is radical. But taken together, it fundamentally changes how pricing behaves inside the organisation.
The real unlock: cadence
Here’s where we need to be genuinely ambitious.
With the right tools, governance, and mindset, the opportunity is to move to dozens of small, low-risk pricing experiments every year.
That doesn’t mean chaos. It means control. Smaller changes have a smaller blast radius. They’re easier to explain. Easier to reverse. And far easier to learn from.
Instead of betting the year on a handful of big calls, we compound insight continuously. Pricing becomes less dramatic and far more effective.
Why this matters now
We’re all facing the same pressures: margin compression, cost volatility, and customers who are more value-aware than ever.
In that environment, the organisations that win won’t be the ones with the bravest pricing decisions. They’ll be the ones that learn the fastest.
Treating pricing as a capability, something we invest in, practice, and refine, creates that advantage. It turns uncertainty into signal. It replaces gut feel with evidence. And over time, it builds a proprietary understanding of what our customers value, where they’re sensitive, and where they aren’t.
That knowledge compounds. Competitors can copy prices. They can’t copy learning velocity.
The shift is cultural, not technical
Yes, tooling matters. Without the ability to isolate, test, and measure cleanly, this all falls apart.
But the harder shift is cultural.
It’s leadership being comfortable saying: “We don’t know yet – but we will.”
It’s rewarding learning, not just outcomes.
It’s normalising change instead of treating it as a disruption.
When pricing becomes part of how we operate, not something we survive twice a year, it stops being a source of anxiety and starts becoming a genuine lever for performance. And in the environment we’re operating in now, that isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s essential.