Menu psychology and architecture: what research actually proves — and how a menu leads guests to the dishes that earn you most.
The trilogy takes a menu from a plain price list to a smart tool for making money. The first book explains how guests choose, the second what each dish is really worth, the third how software runs it all for you. Each book also stands on its own.
Menu psychology and architecture. Menu engineering, price psychology, the decoy effect and menu layout — with an evidence grade for every piece of advice.
Menu maths: food cost, recipe specifications, pricing and stock — and exactly where the money goes. Costing to the cent, yield, purchasing, pricing with VAT, drinks, stock and the monthly reconciliation.
The menu in the digital world: QR menu, allergen matrix, till and kitchen screen as one system — with one source of truth, one order id and a human for every critical decision.
Menus attract plenty of talk and very little measurement. Till-system blogs and consultants still copy figures from studies that don’t hold up. The Choice Algorithm says, for every claim, how well it has really been measured, and gives the source — and where there is no evidence, it says so.
Three parts: how guests choose, the architecture of the offer, and drinks plus testing in your own dining room. Every chapter has a number you measure, forms, one restaurant worked through with every figure, and the rules for the EU, the UK, the US and Serbia where they differ.
| No. | Chapter | The number you measure | Forms in the book |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | How guests really choose | food contribution per guest, € excl. VAT | Observation at the table · The key number: contribution per guest |
| 02 | Ten menu myths | menu elements based on a myth | Myth check on your menu |
| 03 | Menu engineering that counts everything | weighted contribution margin, main courses, € | Menu analysis with labour minutes · Decision per dish |
| 04 | How many dishes, and which sections | ingredients used in only one dish | Ingredient map · Section structure and price range |
| 05 | Prices guests accept | main courses below the target contribution | Price ladder for a section · Price change plan |
| 06 | Layout and design: paper, board, screen, platform | stars and puzzles as a share of main-course sales, % | Menu layout sketch · Readability checklist |
| 07 | Words and labels that sell | vegetable side, portions a week | Names and descriptions workshop · Labels and allergens |
| 08 | Choices that guide themselves | desserts per 100 guests | Defaults and bundles plan · Boundary check: guidance or deception |
| 09 | The drinks and wine list | drinks contribution per guest, € | Drinks list analysis · Wine list price range |
| 10 | Your restaurant is a laboratory | menu changes decided by a test, % | Test plan · Test and decision log |
The full menu of Acacia, a fictional restaurant — dishes, prices, costs, sales and labour minutes — runs through the book from the first page to the last. After every chapter the P&L shows what the change brought: from €408 profit before tax a month at the start to €1,538 at the end, from menu changes alone. The assumptions are deliberately more modest than what the research measures.
Each book in the trilogy is a single product: the book with every form, workbook, template and poster that goes with it. No tiers and nothing extra to pay.
The book and every resource that comes with it, for your restaurant and your team.
The workbooks run in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice; the templates in Word, Google Docs and LibreOffice.
Each book costs €39. All three together cost €99 instead of €117 — a saving of €18. All three books are out; if you have already bought one or two, you pay only the difference for the set.
Checkout is through Gumroad. Once you pay, the download link arrives in your inbox right away.
More than thirty years in hospitality: in top hotel kitchens and restaurants and on cruise ships. He has worked and lived on four continents and knows both sides of the business — the one at the stove and the one at the owner’s desk.
He is the founder and owner of Gostíno.ai, an agency that helps hospitality businesses run their work with digital tools.
The same job is bound by the same problems everywhere.
A 191-page PDF, 2026 edition. It reads on a phone, tablet or computer. The printable forms are A4; the fill-in forms for the computer come in A4 and US Letter.
British English. There is also a Serbian edition, Algoritam izbora.
Yes. Book 2, The Code Equation: menu maths — food cost, standard recipes, pricing and stock. Book 3, The AI Ecosystem: QR menu, allergen matrix, POS and KDS as one system.
Each book costs €39; all three together cost €99. All three books are out. If you have already bought one or two, you pay only the difference up to €99.
Everything: forms to print and to fill in, the Excel workbooks and the Acacia workbook, Word templates, AI prompts, the menu audit kit, wall posters and video guides. No tiers and nothing extra to pay.
No. The Choice Algorithm stands on its own. If you have Restaurant Code, you will recognise Acacia: the same restaurant and the same starting point, but this book goes much deeper into the menu.
Every claim says how well it has been measured: strong, moderate, weak, myth, unreliable or not verified. The grade belongs to the claim, not to its author, and it is the same throughout the book; a table of every claim is in the appendix.
No. Acacia is a fictional restaurant, the same one from the first page to the last. Its numbers show the method; they don’t promise a result. Every fact from research has a source at the end of its chapter.
Checkout is through Gumroad. Once you pay, the download link arrives in your inbox right away.
Then a decision based on the numbers, not on gut feeling.