When Costs Move Faster Than Prices: What Operators Told Us, and Why Execution Is Now the Risk

When Costs Move Faster Than Prices: What Operators Told Us, and Why Execution Is Now the Risk

At a recent Tech on Toast panel in partnership with Openr, operators, menu experts and technologists came together to discuss a challenge that has quietly become one of hospitality’s biggest commercial risks: pricing can’t keep up with costs.

The discussion echoed what many operators already feel on the ground. This is not a lack of commercial thinking or ambition. It’s an execution problem.

That conclusion is reinforced by new research produced by Tech on Toast in collaboration with Openr, based on responses from operators across restaurants, pubs, cafés, hotels and contract catering businesses across the UK.

Pricing decisions are happening, pricing execution isn’t

One of the headline findings from the research is stark: more than half of operators estimate they are losing between 2–5% of margin every year purely due to pricing delays, with some reporting losses of 6% or more during periods of high volatility  .

That margin erosion rarely shows up as a single dramatic moment. Instead, it happens quietly. By the time a price change goes live, the cost increase it was meant to offset has often already been absorbed.

The panel brought this to life. Joel Robinson, Founder of Openr, described how pricing changes today must be aligned across EPOS, delivery platforms, kiosks, websites and printed menus. Without a central source of truth, even simple changes become slow and risky, forcing businesses into fewer, bigger, higher-pressure menu updates each year.

The hidden workload behind every menu change

From an operational perspective, Alice McCombie of Hall & Woodhouse explained just how resource-heavy pricing and menu changes really are. For a 40–60 site estate, a single update can involve four to five people in IT alone over a six-week period, before finance, marketing and operations are even factored in.

The research backs this up. Nearly 40% of operators estimate their teams spend more than 20 hours every month collating menus, re-keying prices and fixing inconsistencies, a figure that regularly exceeds 100 hours per month in larger estates  .

This workload creates a confidence gap. When execution feels fragile, teams slow down. Pricing decisions become conservative. Estate-wide changes replace smarter, more targeted adjustments.

Why spreadsheets are no longer enough

Another clear signal from the research: over 70% of operators want a single source of truth for menus and pricing  . Many are still relying on spreadsheets, email chains and manual checks, often duplicating data across multiple systems. Fewer than half are fully confident that prices are consistent across all channels at any given time.

Annica Wainwright, Co-founder of 2Forks, summed it up well during the panel. Blanket price increases rarely work. Strategic pricing, protecting value items, nudging high-volume dishes and testing small changes, delivers far better results, but only if teams can move quickly and confidently.

Why this research matters now

This research is not about telling operators how to price. It’s about showing why pricing has become constrained,  and why fixing execution unlocks margin, resilience and confidence.

As the report concludes: when costs move faster than prices, execution becomes the risk  .

👉 Download the full Tech on Toast × Openr report to explore the data, operator insights and what modern pricing execution needs to look like in practice.