Set different prices for events, happy hours, busy periods, or capacity - automatically, without your guests ever seeing a price change.
Smart pricing — also called dynamic pricing — automatically adjusts your menu prices based on real-time conditions like how busy you are, the time of day, or a special occasion. Instead of one fixed price, your menu responds to demand the way airlines and hotels have done for years. menus.kitchen offers three types of smart pricing: Capacity pricing, Time based pricing, and Event pricing. The cards below explain each one.
When your floor fills past a threshold you choose — say 80% of seats — prices step up by your percentage until things quiet down.
Lower prices on the days and hours you need bodies in seats. A 3pm table at −15% beats an empty table at full price.
Match day, concert weekend, Valentine's. Set a start, an end and an adjustment — the menu handles the rest.
A static menu leaves money on the table twice: empty seats all afternoon, and full-price tickets while the queue is out the door.
Three questions every owner asks before switching on dynamic pricing — answered.
The average restaurant running smart pricing sees a 12% revenue increase — without adding a single seat or member of staff. But that's just the starting point. With capacity-based pricing, every percentage of occupancy becomes a lever you control. Set your own pricing rules, define your own ceiling, and let the system do the rest. Restaurants that configure their pricing aggressively during peak hours report results well beyond the industry average — because the only limit is the one you set.
The restaurants that get burned by dynamic pricing aren't the ones that charge more — they're the ones that surprise their customers with it. Just like airlines or hotels, restaurants have a good reason to charge more for certain events, or during certain times. The key to ensuring your customers always walk away happy is to be transparent about smart pricing. We recommend displaying a small sign outside which says "We use the menus.kitchen Smart Pricing feature to offer discounts during slow periods. Scan our QR code now to lock in your price!" This is absolutely key to profitably using smart pricing. Transparency isn't just good practice — it's part of a legal requirement that customers know exactly what they are paying and that the system is fair. This is your strongest reputation tool.
Smart pricing is completely legal across the EU, with one non-negotiable rule: the price a customer sees is the price they pay, shown before they ever sit down. Our system handles this automatically. When a customer scans your entrance QR code, they see the prices in real time — locked in from that moment, regardless of what happens to occupancy after. Beyond that, EU law requires prices to be displayed outside your premises — displaying a QR code outside satisfies that too. Our system ensures that even if a customer scans the QR code outside the restaurant and sees a low price, they will always be able to get that low price if they come back within 60 minutes, even if the price has risen.
Our smart pricing system ensures that every table gets a single price for the whole visit. The price lock-in starts at the first scan — whether it occurs via the QR code outside the restaurant, on the website, or by scanning a QR code at a table.
The current rate is captured at that instant — automatically, with no waiter input.
From that moment the table's menu is frozen. Refreshing, browsing, ordering — nothing moves it.
Friends scanning the same QR join the same lock. The whole table sees identical prices.
Marking the bill paid frees the table. The next group locks in whatever the rate is then.
52% of consumers call restaurant smart pricing "price gouging" — it's why a major fast-food chain had to walk back its surge plans in 2024. We built ours so there is nothing to be upset about.
Rates freeze per table at the first scan. Mid-meal, the menu never moves — no matter what demand does.
Everyone at the same table inherits the same locked rate. No "why is mine more expensive?"
If the rate falls before a table orders, their lock follows it down automatically. Rises are blocked; drops are not.
Every order is re-checked against the table's locked rate at the moment it's placed. The number on screen is the number on the bill.
A stadium fixture, a festival weekend, a holiday rush — the nights your room is guaranteed to fill are the nights your menu should earn more.
Your staff do nothing — the floor view simply shows each table's locked rate, so any price question is answered at a glance.
Never. The rate is frozen for their table the moment the first person scans the QR code, and it stays frozen until the bill is settled. They can refresh, re-scan or order three rounds — the prices they saw are the prices they pay.
If nobody at the table has ordered yet, their lock automatically follows the rate down — guests always get the better price. Once the first order is in, the price stays exactly as displayed so the bill is consistent across rounds.
Yes. Staff orders lock and charge the very same table rate as QR orders, so a waiter's order and a guest's phone order for the same table always match.
No. The lock starts automatically on the first scan and releases automatically when you mark the bill paid — the same tap you already do. The floor view shows a small lock badge with each table's rate.
Absolutely. Many restaurants run happy-hour or quiet-day rules only and never surge at all. Rules are independent — use the ones that fit.
It's a legal grey area — there haven't been any rulings on whether a QR code alone satisfies the requirement to display a menu outside. To stay on the safe side, you must have a device available to give customers to show the menu outside the restaurant. The same device will be given to them at the table when they are seated. In this way the prices will be locked from when they first see them.
Not with prices on it. While smart pricing is in effect, prices change in real time, so a printed price would quickly fall out of sync with what a guest actually pays — and handing one out could mislead customers. We recommend printing menus without any prices and keeping pricing purely online, so the live, price-locked menu on the device is always the single source of truth.
Smart pricing is built into Menus. Set your first rule in two minutes — no hardware, no staff training.
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