Pricing is a design decision before it is a commercial one. The same number reads differently depending on where it sits and what it is set in.
Drop the trailing zeros
280 reads as a price. ₹280.00 reads as an invoice. Decimals on a menu suggest precision that the kitchen does not have and the diner does not want. Keep them only where the currency genuinely uses them in ordinary speech.
The currency symbol is usually noise
If every line on the menu is in rupees, the symbol on every line is repeated information. Put it in the header once — "All prices in ₹, inclusive of taxes" — and let the figures stand alone. This is standard in printed fine dining and it works for the same reason on a phone.
Keep the symbol when the menu serves a mixed audience, such as a hotel that prices in two currencies.
Set figures in the display face
A price set in the body font disappears into the description. A price set in the menu's display face, at the same size as the dish name, reads as part of the design rather than as a running total.
Use tabular figures so the column lines up. Proportional figures make a list of prices look ragged even when the values are the same length.
Anchoring works, but not the way it is usually described
The common advice is to put an expensive item at the top to make everything below it look reasonable. What actually works is narrower: one genuinely premium item in a category makes the second-most-expensive item the safe choice, and the second item is usually the one with the better margin.
This only works if the premium item is real. A dish priced high that nobody orders and the kitchen cannot make well is not an anchor, it is a liability.
What to do when prices change often
Two principles:
- Never show a price you will not honour. A wrong price costs more in trust than the difference costs in margin.
- Change the price rather than adding "market price". That phrase reads as evasion on everything except seafood.
The whole argument for a digital menu is that the first principle stops being expensive to follow.
