Try to find out what an F&B consultant charges and you will mostly find contact forms. Pricing in this category is almost universally quote-on-request, which makes it hard to work out whether you are looking at a four-figure or six-figure decision before you have spent an hour on a call.
Here is what the market actually looks like, and where we sit in it.
The four pricing models
| Model | Typical range | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | $40–120/hr generalist, $75–300/hr specialist | Small, well-defined questions | Costs are open-ended; scope creep is on your side of the ledger |
| Project fee | $2,500–100,000 for menu work | One-off redesign or a launch | Ends when the document is delivered — implementation is on you |
| Monthly retainer | $5,000–15,000/mo | Large groups and multi-property portfolios | Priced for chains; usually far above an independent property's budget |
| Productised subscription | From €299/mo | Independent hotels and resorts, 50–300 rooms | Fixed scope by design — check the package covers your outlets |
Why menu design quotes vary so wildly
You can pay $150 for a menu on a freelance marketplace or $10,000 to an agency, and both are real prices for genuinely different things.
- A marketplace designer makes your menu look good. No analysis, no pricing architecture, no accountability for what it sells.
- A design agency makes it look good and on-brand. Still primarily an aesthetic exercise.
- A menu engineer changes what it sells — item placement, price architecture, description, margin mix — and the visual design is the last step, not the first.
What we charge
Our packages start at €299/month with a €499 onboarding fee at our base regional tier, and run to €1,699/month for quarterly on-site work in premium destinations. Pricing is tiered by region because delivery cost and market rates genuinely differ. Every tier is published rather than quoted.
Partnerships run 12 months, because menu changes need a full seasonal cycle to prove themselves and staff habits take more than a quarter to stick.
How to judge whether any of it is worth it
Work out your current monthly F&B revenue, then ask what a 15% improvement in revenue per guest would be worth. For a property doing 50 covers a day at a €30 average, that is roughly €6,750 a month. Against that, the question is not whether the fee is large but whether the uplift is plausible.
If a provider cannot tell you how they would measure that, or will not commit to finding a specific amount of opportunity before you sign, that is the more useful signal than the price itself.