Modifiers let restaurant owners create a truly customized experience for guests — letting them add on upgrades and upsells or take away items they may be allergic to or simply not care for.
Perhaps the most common example is adding a small extra fee for adding cheese to a dish.
But it doesn’t stop with cheese! You can add any type of modifier — maybe sautéed onions on top of a steak, a special sauce addition or an upgrade to a bigger portion. Or maybe it’s a swap for egg whites or gluten free bread.
With each modifier, you can add a title (such as “add cheese”) along with a description and price.
Modifiers help with customer preferences
Modifiers can also have “negative” pricing for when your menu lets customers remove an item and save a bit of cash.
A good example of this would be removing chicken or other protein from an entree or main course salad for vegetarians or those with a lighter appetite.
In this case, you can create a modifier with a name (such as “no chicken”) and a negative price illustrating that the customer will be charged less.
While removing items often results in lower tickets, keep in mind that each item can have unlimited modifiers — so you can always suggest an alternative to removing an item. These might include, in our example above, letting customers remove chicken but add tofu or extra veggies to the salad to not only create a meal they will enjoy but also recoup some of that revenue.
The best dining experience
All that said, modifiers are really a great way to help customers get into the nuances of your menu and customize a meal to meet their own tastes, dietary requirements or hunger.