Pricing a pub Christmas menu for 2026: the GP sum behind a £36 three courses

The big pub and restaurant chains charged an average of £36 for three Christmas courses in 2025, up 4% on 2024. Take the VAT off and a £36 menu is £30. At a 65% food GP, all three courses on the plate together can cost you £10.50 and no more. Food prices are barely moving this year, up 1.3% in the year to August 2026 on the ONS figures, so if your menu needs a big rise, it's the wages driving it, not the turkey.

Christmas menus get priced in October and regretted in January. The usual way it goes wrong is that last year's price gets nudged up by a pound because that feels about right, the menu goes out, the bookings come in, and nobody costs the plate until the first invoice for sprouts lands. So here's the sum, done properly, before the menu goes to print.

What pubs charged last Christmas

Meaningful Vision tracked festive pricing across 5,000 sites run by the big hospitality groups for Christmas 2025. The average three courses came out at £36 a head, 4% up on 2024, after a 10% jump the year before. Two thirds of operators put prices up, by 9% on average. A fifth held them, and 15% actually cut. Around a fifth of the chains dropped two-course festive options altogether and only sold three, usually at a £5 premium, and some quietly took the free welcome drink out of the package.

Pub and restaurant menu prices rose 7% on 2024 in that analysis, against 5% food and drink inflation on the ONS figures at the time. In plain terms, most operators put Christmas up by more than their costs went up. Meanwhile, the same report found eating-out visits down 0.4% between January and September 2025, about 27 million fewer visits. Higher prices, fewer people. That's the backdrop you're pricing into.

For independents the spread is wider. When the Morning Advertiser polled its readers in 2023, 31% said they'd charge more than £30 for Christmas dinner, and 7% said more than £100.

The sum: what your plate can cost at each price

Food is standard-rated, so a fifth of whatever you charge goes to HMRC before you've bought a parsnip. Every GP figure here is on the ex-VAT price. Here's the most the food on all three courses can cost per head and still hit your target:

Maximum food cost per head for three courses. My arithmetic: menu price divided by 1.2, then multiplied by (1 minus the GP target).

Menu price (inc VAT)	You keep (ex VAT)	Plate cost at 60% GP	At 65% GP	At 70% GP
£30	£25.00	£10.00	£8.75	£7.50
£33	£27.50	£11.00	£9.63	£8.25
£36	£30.00	£12.00	£10.50	£9.00
£39	£32.50	£13.00	£11.38	£9.75
£42	£35.00	£14.00	£12.25	£10.50

Read it backwards. Cost your plate first, then find the row where your cost sits under your target column. If your three courses cost £11 on the plate and you want 65%, £36 doesn't do it. You need nearer £38, or a cheaper dessert.

How to cost the plate without kidding yourself

Cost every dish per portion off this year's invoices, not last year's menu card. Weigh the portion the kitchen actually serves, not the one in the spec, because Christmas portions creep. Then add everything that goes on the plate that nobody thinks of as an ingredient: the gravy, the cranberry, the bread and butter, the garnish, the cream on the pudding. On a three-course menu those bits are often a pound a head between them.

Then cost the extras that sit outside the food:

Extra	What it does to a £36 menu
Every £1 per head of extras (cracker, hat, chocolates, a welcome drink)	Takes 3.3 points off your food GP. £1 out of the £30 you keep
A welcome glass of fizz	Cost it at your bottle price divided by the glasses you actually get, not the glasses on the label
Coffee and mince pies "included"	Count them as a fourth course, because the stock goes out the same way

The free welcome drink is the one I'd look at hardest. It's wet stock leaving the cellar with nothing going through the till for it, which is exactly the kind of thing that turns up as a gap on the January stocktake. If you keep it, ring it through on its own button at zero so the count can see it. The same logic is in my guide to comps and freebies.

The cost that's actually gone up: the people

The national living wage went to £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over on 1 April 2026. Party nights need more hands, and those hands are often casuals on irregular hours who accrue holiday at 12.07% of hours worked. An extra four-hour shift is £50.84 in wages, about £56.98 with the holiday on top, before any employer National Insurance. Spread over a 40-cover party night that's £1.42 a head for one extra person. Two extra people, a kitchen porter and a runner, and you're near £3 a head.

That isn't food cost, so it doesn't show in your GP. It shows in your profit. Which is why the menu price has to cover more than the plate, and why the 2025 chains put prices up faster than food inflation. The full holiday sums for temps are in the holiday pay guide.

No-shows, pre-orders and the waste in between

A party of twelve that turns up as eight has still had twelve portions of turkey cooked for it if you're working blind. Take pre-orders for big tables, take a deposit when they book, and put your deposit terms in writing at the time, so nobody's arguing about it on 20 December. The pre-order sheet doubles as your prep list and your stock order, and it's the cheapest waste control there is.

Whatever doesn't get used, write it down when it happens. A wastage log filled in on the night is the difference between knowing your Christmas food GP and guessing it in February. If your chef is on a GP bonus, agree now whether party nights count, because a December with a low GP and a lot of turkey in the bin is a hard conversation to have afterwards. I set out how to design that bonus fairly in kitchen GP bonus schemes.

Don't forget the bar

Christmas parties drink more than they eat, and a lot of it goes through packages, tabs and pre-paid bottles of wine on the table. Price the drinks package on the same ex-VAT logic and make sure every bottle on a pre-paid table is rung in, not just noted on the booking. I covered package drinks that the till never sees in function bar stock control, and the cost of a glass of mulled wine in mulled wine GP. The stock planning for the season itself is in Christmas and New Year stock management.

So what should a pub charge in 2026?

I'm not going to give you a number, because the right one comes out of your plate cost, not mine. But the context points one way. If 2026 went up by the same 4% as last year, £36 becomes about £37.44. Food inflation is low, so a rise much above that has to be explained by your wages and your extras, and you should be able to point to where it goes. Push it 9% because the chains did, into a market where people are going out less, and you might find the quiet Tuesday in December is quieter than last year's.

Where I'd spend the effort instead: cost the plate properly, cut the extras that don't sell the menu, and take pre-orders so the kitchen cooks what's been bought. That protects more GP than another pound on the price.

My take

Christmas is the one time of year when the menu price and the stock result are completely tied together, because you're cooking at volume to a fixed price. Price from this year's invoices, write the waste down on the night, and count the kitchen and the cellar straight after New Year, not at the end of January when nobody can remember which party had the extra turkey. If you'd rather see your GP worked out for you, the free GP calculator does the sum on any price.

Common questions

How much do pubs charge for a Christmas menu?

The average three-course Christmas menu across 5,000 chain pub and restaurant sites was £36 a head in 2025, up 4% on 2024, according to Meaningful Vision. Independent pubs vary more widely: in a 2023 Morning Advertiser poll, 31% charged more than £30 for Christmas dinner.

What GP should a pub Christmas menu make?

Most pubs aim for a food GP in the 60% to 70% range, worked out on the price without VAT. On a £36 menu that means the food on all three courses together can cost £12 at 60%, £10.50 at 65% or £9 at 70%.

How do I work out the price of a Christmas menu?

Cost each dish per portion from this year's invoices, add the small items like sauces and garnish, then divide the total plate cost by (1 minus your GP target) and multiply by 1.2 for VAT. Then add a separate allowance for extras like crackers or a welcome drink, which come straight off your margin.

Have food prices gone up a lot this year?

Not much. The ONS put food and non-alcoholic drink prices up 1.3% in the 12 months to August 2026, while restaurant and hotel prices were up 4.1%. Staffing, not ingredients, is where most of the cost pressure on a 2026 Christmas menu sits.

Should a pub take deposits for Christmas parties?

Most do, and taking pre-orders for big tables at the same time cuts waste, because the kitchen cooks what was booked. Put the deposit terms in writing when the booking is made.