Seven menu decisions turn up again and again in the cafes that succeed, whatever the suburb, the format or the founder's background.
Here they are, with how to make each one work for your cafe.
Build the menu for one specific customer
The cafes that thrive past year one tend to do one thing very deliberately. They pick a customer and build the menu for them. Not everyone within five minutes of the door: one specific profile, and a menu that serves that person brilliantly.
A focused menu of 15 to 25 items consistently beats a sprawling one. Service speeds up because the kitchen builds muscle memory. Wastage drops because ingredients get used across several dishes. Quality lifts because the kitchen has time to get each plate right. Customers who don't fit your menu will find a cafe that fits them, and your regulars will love you for being clear about who you are.
How to find your customer
Walk the streets within five minutes of your door at the times you'll be open. Note who you see: who they are, what they're already paying at nearby cafes, what they're carrying, where they sit. Build the menu for the person you see most often, not the customer you imagined.
If your draft menu runs past 25 items, you should at least be able to describe the customer for each section in one sentence. If you can't, there's more focus to find before opening.
Cost from true cost, not ingredients alone
The most useful number in any cafe is the true cost of each dish. The cafes that thrive know it for every item. The ones that struggle tend to know only the ingredient cost, and the margin hides in the gap between the two.
True cost is ingredients plus the dish's share of overheads (rent, wages, power, packaging, EFTPOS, accounting, software, insurance) plus the cook's labour minutes. As an example, a dish with $4 of ingredients can cost closer to $9 to produce once overheads and labour are loaded in. Knowing that changes how you price the dish.
How to do it
Cost every dish on two lines: COGS (ingredients at yielded weight and supplier price, plus packaging on takeaway) and overhead allocation (monthly overheads, wages included, divided by realistic monthly transactions). The number at the bottom is your true cost. The cafe menu costing guide walks through it step by step.
Once you can name your top 3 dishes by margin and your bottom 3, the menu has been costed properly. That's the bar, and once your overheads are loaded in it takes about 30 minutes.
Price from your numbers, not your competitor's menu
Prices that work come from your own numbers. The cafe down the road has different overheads, different suppliers and a different wage bill. Copying their $19 Smashed Avocado tells you nothing about whether $19 works for you. Use competitor prices to check what your suburb will accept, not as the source of the number.
The cafes that thrive work prices backwards from the gross profit margin they need on each dish. Once you know your COGS, the formula is mechanical.
How to do it
Set a target GP% for each menu category (coffee 70 to 75%, food 65 to 70%, batched cold drinks 75 to 80%, sweets 65 to 70%). Work the price backwards: COGS ÷ (1 minus target GP%) = your starting price ex GST, then add 10% GST. Check the gross profit covers the overhead share from Decision 02, then polish it with rounding, anchoring and layout. The cafe menu pricing guide covers each step.
You load your overheads into HospoSure once: rent, wages, utilities, packaging, the lot. It then costs every dish on your menu against your actual numbers and shows the margin each price earns. The full costed menu pushes into Square POS in one click.
Try the free demoDesign dishes any cook can execute consistently
Experienced chefs are hard to find and harder to keep. The cafes that thrive design their menu around the staff they can hire and keep, often young cooks with limited formal training, and build dishes those cooks can deliver consistently, every shift, after 15 minutes of training.
That doesn't mean dumbing down the food. It means building each dish so it comes out reliably whoever is on the line: good recipe cards, clear prep specs, organised mise en place, and dishes designed to be repeated without a chef's instinct. The cafe stays consistent through staff changes, and that's exactly what regulars want.
How to test it
Hand a new cook your three most complex dishes, show them the recipe card and prep sheet, and watch them make each one. If it's ready for service within 15 minutes of training, the dish is built right. If not, simplify the recipe. Usually that means a clearer prep step, fewer ingredients or a more forgiving cooking method.
Dishes that pass the 15 minute test survive staff changes intact. Building the menu around them is one of the most valuable decisions on this list, and one of the most freeing, because one resignation no longer puts the cafe at risk.
Position your stars where the eye lands first
Every cafe menu has stars (high margin, high volume), ploughhorses (low margin, high volume), puzzles (high margin, low volume) and dogs (low margin, low volume). The cafes that thrive treat each group differently. Stars sit in the menu's sweet spot, puzzles get moved, dogs come off, and ploughhorses get repriced.
The menu then steers customers toward the dishes that pay best, and nobody feels pushed. The food is just as good, the orders shift, and the same kitchen turns out a healthier weekly P&L.
How to do it
Once the cafe is trading and you have real Square sales data, run a menu engineering review every quarter. Check each dish's volume against its true cost. Move the stars into the sweet spot (top right on a single page menu, upper middle of the right page on a fold). Cut the dogs. Move the puzzles. Reprice the ploughhorses.
HospoSure pulls live sales data from your Square POS, and sets it against your true costs, so you can see which dishes belong where. It's menu engineering based on your actual cafe, not a textbook.
Try the free demoTreat costing as a weekly rhythm, not a one off task
Food prices never sit still. Eggs rose 18.6% in the year to April 2025 as bird flu cut supply, according to the ABS Monthly CPI Indicator. Coffee, dairy and seasonal produce shift week to week. The cafes that thrive treat costing as a habit, not a project: volatile ingredients checked weekly, the rest monthly. Ten minutes every Sunday, all year, and the menu stays profitable whatever the suppliers do.
How to set the rhythm
Pick a regular slot. Sunday afternoon suits most operators because it's quiet and the week's numbers are fresh. Update prices on your 10 most used ingredients first, then any dish ingredients that have spiked. With a proper system, the dish costs and food cost percentages update automatically as ingredient prices move.
The first re-cost after you start the habit usually turns up 1 or 2 dishes that have drifted out of margin without anyone noticing. Catching small drifts before they become big ones is the whole reason to do it.
Use a system to do the consultant's work
The cafes that thrive know a founder's time is the cafe's most valuable resource, and most of it should go to customers, not the spreadsheet. They use a system that does the consultant's job (costing, pricing, menu engineering, Square integration, recosting when supplier prices change), so the menu work runs in the background while the owner runs the floor.
The traditional alternative is hiring a hospitality consultant, which runs $10,000 to $20,000 to do properly. Software built for the job gives you the same outputs for a fraction of the cost, and it's there every week, not just while the consultant is engaged.
HospoSure does the menu work cafes typically pay $10k to $20k for. Full menu costing against your real overheads, margin on every price, dish sales from Square set against true cost, every dish recosted when you update a supplier price, and a 250+ dish library to work from. When AI is not enough, real hospitality consultants are available at member pricing. They log into your account, see what you see, and tell you what to fix.
Try the free demoThe seven decisions, in one page
The cafes that thrive past year one tend to make all seven of these decisions early:
- Build for one specific customer. Focus the menu on the person you see most often within five minutes of your door.
- Cost from true cost. COGS plus overheads, with labour counted once, dish by dish.
- Price from your numbers. Work prices backwards from your target GP%, not from the cafe down the road.
- Design for the cook you can hire. Every dish ready for service within 15 minutes of training.
- Engineer for your stars. High margin, high volume dishes sit where the eye lands first.
- Run costing as a weekly rhythm. Ten minutes every Sunday catches supplier price shifts before they eat into margin.
- Use a system, not your spare hours. Let software do the consultant's work so your time goes to the floor.
Make all seven and the cafe has every chance to thrive past year one.