How to increase average order value in your restaurant
Average order value (AOV) is the average amount each customer spends per order. Increasing it is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow restaurant revenue, because it does not require attracting new customers. The five most effective methods are upselling with add-on suggestions, offering self-service ordering, creating meal deals and bundles, designing your menu to promote high-value items, and using loyalty rewards to encourage higher spend.
Growing revenue is the goal of every restaurant, but the instinct is almost always to chase new customers. There is another route that gets far less attention and is often easier to act on: increasing how much each existing customer spends per order.
That figure is your average order value, or AOV, and small improvements to it add up fast. Here is what AOV is, why it matters, and five simple ways to increase it.
What is average order value?
Average order value is the average amount a customer spends each time they order from your restaurant. You calculate it with a simple formula:
Total revenue ÷ number of orders = average order value
For this purpose it is worth looking at all your orders together, covering dine-in, collection, and delivery, across both in-person and digital channels.
Why average order value matters
A small increase in AOV has a large effect on revenue because it applies to every single order. Take a simple example. If your restaurant takes $10,000 in a week from 500 orders, your AOV is $20.
Now suppose you lift that to $25, an extra $5 per order. With the same 500 orders, your weekly sales become $12,500. That is $2,500 more per week, over $10,000 more per month, and around $130,000 more per year, without serving a single additional customer. That is why AOV is worth putting real strategy behind.
5 ways to increase average order value
1. Upsell with add-on suggestions
Suggesting complementary items at the point of order is one of the most reliable ways to lift AOV. It is the same tactic large ecommerce sites use when they show you items that pair with what is already in your basket, and it works just as well for food.
Your staff can suggest a side, dessert, or drink that complements a customer's order, and your online ordering system and self-service kiosks can do the same automatically at checkout. Adding just one side or dessert to an order is often enough to hit a meaningful AOV increase. For more detail on training your team to do this well, see our guide to restaurant upselling techniques.
2. Offer self-service ordering
Customers consistently spend more when they order digitally than when they order in person. Without the perceived time pressure of a queue or a server waiting, they take longer to browse, and they add more to their order.
Giving customers the option of self-service kiosks, digital table ordering, and online ordering for collection and delivery is one of the most effective structural changes you can make to increase AOV. The uplift is automatic once the channels are in place, and it applies to every order placed through them.
3. Offer meal deals, bundles, and set menus
Bundling, where a set of items is sold together for less than they would cost individually, is one of the most proven tactics in food retail. The McDonald's value meal is the classic example, selling millions of combos by giving customers clear value while increasing the size of each order.
The same principle scales down to any restaurant. A combo deal, a family bundle, or a set two or three course menu all nudge customers toward a larger order than they might otherwise have placed. Set menus work particularly well for higher-end restaurants, where a fixed multi-course offering raises the per-head spend predictably.
4. Design your menu to promote high-value items
A customer can only eat so much in one visit, so guiding them toward your higher-value dishes is a direct route to a bigger order. Identify the dishes that are both popular and toward the upper end of your price range without being unaffordable, and give them prominence.
Place these items in prime positions on both your printed and online menus, and support them with strong photography and appetising descriptions. Well-designed menus influence what customers choose more than most operators realise, and your staff can reinforce it with dine-in recommendations.
5. Use loyalty rewards to encourage higher spend
Loyalty programmes are usually thought of as a retention tool, but they can also drive AOV directly. By structuring rewards around spend, you give customers a reason to order more per visit.
One approach is to tie reward value to average spend, so customers who order more earn more back. Another is to offer a discount or reward on orders above a set threshold, for example a reward on orders over $30, which encourages customers to add an item to qualify. Both build loyalty and lift order value at the same time. Flipdish's restaurant marketing tools let you set up and automate these rewards.
Combine tactics and track what works
You do not need to use all five approaches at once. Start with the ones that are most practical for your business, then monitor your AOV regularly to see which are having the biggest effect. Review the data, keep what is working, and refine what is not. Once you know which tactics reliably move the number, build on them.
Frequently asked questions
Average order value is the average amount a customer spends per order. It is calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of orders over a given period, across dine-in, collection, and delivery. It is a key metric for understanding and growing restaurant revenue.
Divide your total revenue by your total number of orders for a given period. For example, $10,000 in sales from 500 orders gives an average order value of $20. Tracking this figure over time shows whether your efforts to increase it are working.
Increasing average order value grows revenue without the cost of acquiring new customers. Because the increase applies to every order, even a small rise has a large cumulative effect. Lifting AOV by a few dollars per order can add tens of thousands to annual revenue.
The fastest structural change is enabling digital ordering channels such as self-service kiosks and online ordering, as customers reliably spend more when ordering digitally. Adding automated add-on prompts at checkout increases order value on every transaction with no ongoing effort.
Yes, when structured correctly. Bundling items together for slightly less than their combined individual price encourages customers to order more than they otherwise would, increasing the total order value while giving the customer a sense of value. This is why bundling is used so widely across the food industry.
