How to Increase Average Order Value in Your Restaurant
Lifting how much each customer spends is often easier than finding new customers. Practical ways to grow average order value.
Finding new customers is expensive. Getting the customers you already have to spend a little more is often the fastest, cheapest route to better profit — and it can be done without anyone feeling squeezed. A modest lift in average order value, applied across every table, every service, compounds into serious revenue over a year. This guide shows you how.
Why average order value is your easiest win
You've already paid to get the customer through the door — the marketing, the rent, the staff are all sunk costs the moment they sit down. Anything extra they spend is almost pure margin. That's why lifting average spend is so profitable: you're not paying to acquire anyone new, you're simply making each existing visit worth more. A A$4 increase per head across 200 covers a night is A$800 a night, A$5,600 a week — for free.
Step 1: Make the easy add-ons obvious
The simplest gains come from things people would happily buy if prompted:
- Offer sides, sauces and extras clearly on the menu and verbally ("add halloumi," "make it a meal").
- Suggest a drink pairing with mains.
- Use table talkers to promote high-margin desserts and cocktails at the point of decision.
- Prompt a second round before glasses run dry.
Step 2: Bundle for value
Set menus, "make it a meal," sharing platters and tasting menus increase the total bill while feeling like good value to the guest. Bundles also simplify decisions and can speed up service. Design them so the bundle includes your higher-margin items.
Step 3: Empower your team to sell
Your servers are your sales team, and they have the biggest single influence on average spend. Equip them:
- Teach genuine, low-pressure prompts — "Can I get you another?", "Our dessert special tonight is…", "The [wine] is lovely with that."
- Make sure they know the menu and can recommend confidently.
- Recognise and reward great upselling so it becomes a habit, not a chore.
A well-trained team will lift average spend more than any menu tweak.
Step 4: Use psychology, not pressure
- Anchor with a premium option so mid-range choices feel reasonable.
- Recommend, don't push — suggestions feel like service; pressure feels like sales.
- Make the higher-value choice the easy, obvious one through menu design and prompts.
Step 5: Don't forget drinks and desserts
These are usually your highest-margin items and the most often skipped. A simple, well-timed prompt — "save room for dessert?", "another glass?" — recovers a lot of lost spend. Make sure desserts and drinks are visible, tempting and offered every time.
Step 6: Measure and refine
Track average spend per head weekly. Test changes — a new bundle, a dessert prompt, a wine recommendation — and keep what moves the number. Small, consistent gains compound into real revenue.
Common mistakes
- Leaving upselling to chance instead of training for it.
- Hiding desserts, sides and drinks instead of promoting them.
- Pushing too hard, so it feels like sales rather than service.
- Not measuring, so you can't tell what's working.
Your average-spend action plan
- Make add-ons, sides and pairings obvious on the menu and in service.
- Build value bundles around high-margin items.
- Train and reward your team on genuine upselling.
- Anchor with a premium option; keep the higher-value choice easy.
- Always prompt desserts and drinks.
- Track average spend per head weekly and refine.
How long until you see results?
Because these changes apply to every table immediately, you can see a lift in average spend within days to a couple of weeks — and it compounds across every service from there.
Want help engineering your menu and in-venue prompts to lift spend? Get started.
