Menu Questions Calculator

No. Some guests will always ask, and some questions need a person. A menu guests can check before they order answers part of them. You pick how much: 25%, 50% or 75%.

Not as cash unless you schedule fewer server hours. It is time your servers spend answering instead of serving. The $17 is about the US median for servers with tips included, so if you pay a lower cash wage, enter it under More settings. If you turn guests away at busy times, say so there and the tool adds an upper bound for extra sales.

• Hourly rate: Bureau of Labor Statistics wage survey, May 2025, waiters and waitresses, median $16.94 an hour, tips included (technical notes).
• New hires: Bureau of Labor Statistics job openings and turnover survey, Table 18, accommodation and food services, 5.5% a month in 2025.
• Share who ask, minutes per question, training hours and the busy-time inputs are your estimates. No public study measures them.

In the US, only chains with 20 or more locations under the same name, selling substantially the same menu items, have to. They post calories for each standard menu item and keep written nutrition information on the premises for guests who ask (FDA menu labeling rule).

Not under the federal menu rule. A restaurant with fewer than 20 locations can register with FDA to follow it voluntarily. One exception applies to every restaurant: if the menu makes a nutrient claim such as "low fat", the restaurant must give nutrition information for that item on request (FDA's rule on nutrient claims).

The federal menu rule covers calories and nutrients, not allergens. California is different: since July 1, 2026, SB 68 requires California chains with 20 or more locations to list the major allergens for each menu item, on the menu or through a QR code. In a CDC study of 278 restaurants, a third of servers interviewed had food allergy training. This calculator does not count allergen mistakes.

Most work from the recipe. FDA accepts nutrient databases, cookbooks, lab analyses or other reasonable means, as long as the restaurant has a reasonable basis and keeps making the item the way it was analyzed (FDA menu labeling rule). BetterMenu works from your recipes and USDA data.

They must be accurate and consistent with the method used to work them out. The rule sets no percentage margin. Instead the restaurant has to prepare and portion each item the way it was analyzed, and show FDA its method and data on request (FDA menu labeling rule).

More than half of Americans (57%) use nutrition information when eating out at least some of the time, and 20% use it regularly, in IFIC's 2025 Food and Health Survey of 3,000 US adults.