Can the Prix Fixe Menu Make Restaurants Affordable Again?

It's a promising model, if chefs are brave enough to take the plunge

Happy diners at the very affordable Mama Oakland Photo credit: Emma Kruch / Emma K Creative

In 2015, a young San Francisco restaurateur named Ryan Cole decided to open a new restaurant. Inspired by the early years of Chez Panisse, long before it started registering on the global elite’s bucket list, there would be homey, seasonal food, warm and professional service — and an affordable three-course menu priced at $35.

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Cole told me.

It turns out they were not. 

When Trestle opened, at the edge of the city’s Chinatown, the 48-seat restaurant was instantly packed. Critic Michael Bauer of the San Francisco Chronicle gave it three out of four stars, gushed over the food, and called the service “​​among the best I’ve found.”  

Nearly 10 years on, with the menu now priced at $45, diners still regularly snap up even the 5:30 and 9:30 slots to eat dishes like crispy skin salmon with dukkah and hazelnut romesco or duck confit with glazed sunchokes. 

It’s easy to understand why Trestle would have staying power. One entrée at a good restaurant costs the same — and sometimes a lot more — than a three-course meal at Trestle. But what’s really remarkable about Trestle is how profitable it is.  The average restaurant earns a 5 percent profit, according to the National Restaurant Association, though after tax it’s often closer to 3 percent (and sometimes zero). Trestle, says Cole, brings in an astounding and consistent 20 percent profit margin. 

No wonder, then, that Cole’s Hi Neighbor restaurant group has since opened two more prix-fixe spots: Mama Oakland, where the three-course menu costs $40, and 7 Adams, which this year won its first Michelin star, and is priced at $87. That’s not exactly cheap, but a lot more palatable than paying $88 for one plate of short ribs.

And here’s why I’ve been wanting to write about Hi Neighbor’s success. It’s not a fluke, or some kind of shady hospitality magic. It’s just math. And it points to one promising model for restaurants today, which are struggling to remain profitable and stay affordable to diners, many of whom feel as if they have been priced out of dining out.

So what’s so great about a prix fixe? 

Before I explain, let me quickly lay out some definitions. A prix fixe, like at a classic Paris bistro, is a set menu, where each diner signs on to eat several courses with limited choices for each dish. This is different from a tasting menu where there may be five, 10, even 50 courses that are chosen by the chef (with substitutes mainly for dietary restrictions). Think of it as a friendly sing-a-long versus a classical symphony.  

Hi Neighbor’s prix-fixe restaurants make their money on volume, Cole explained. Because of the value proposition, Cole is able to serve 100 meals on weeknights and 120 on weekends. “It’s not the first 100 covers that make you money. It’s the last 20; it’s those 5:30 and 10 p.m. reservations,” Cole explained.

The limited choices offered by a prix fixe also helps keep costs down. Trestle’s kitchen doesn’t have to keep a lot of inventory or risk food going to waste if, say, no one orders the duck confit. 

But the food costs are not the biggest cost savings of the prix-fixe model: It’s labor. Trestle runs with just four servers and one manager because it’s easy for staff to read the room. Servers don’t need to keep track of which course an individual diner is waiting for; they can see at a glance — and therefore cover more tables or help out a harried colleague. The limited menu also eliminates the need for an extra cook. 

By managing more tables, the servers also make more money, which, in turn, keeps them from leaving; training new staff is another considerable expense for restaurants. This has also proven true at fancier 7 Adams. Servers earn between $57 and $65 per hour, while kitchen staff get between $24 and $29. All staff get two weeks of paid vacation, up to 80 hours of paid sick leave, and basic health insurance. 

There are other tweaks required to make a prix-fixe restaurant hum. None of Hi Neighbor’s restaurants, for example, serve cocktails — “a huge speed advantage,” according to Cole, since you don’t need a bartender and you can get wine or beer on a table in 10 seconds, just by opening a bottle. And, most fascinating to me, Hi Neighbor has abandoned the traditional markups on luxury ingredients. 

For instance, this time of year is white truffle season. When Trestle has them, it offers them as a $20 supplement to the regular menu, earning $5 per order, rather than the $30 profit that most restaurants would aim for. But Cole isn’t looking to make big money off the truffles. Remember, it’s all about volume. And the bargain will get diners in the door. “The restaurant industry lives and dies on margins. Food costs have to be this, labor has to be that,” he said. “You don’t go to the bank and cash in margins. You cash in dollars.” 

So why haven’t more restaurants gone prix fixe? 

For one, restaurants are terrified to limit choice. American consumerism is built on choice — the more the better. (See: the venti, double-pump, vanilla syrup, oat milk latte at Starbucks.) With a prix fixe you’re forcing diners to agree to multiple courses and limiting the choices for those dishes. It’s un-American! It takes guts to go first, and even more guts to go all in. Which is why you are starting to see some restaurants offering prix fixe and a la carte menus.

Cole also notes that prix-fixe-only restaurants may not work in large spaces. With only 50 seats you can fill tables two, maybe three times; but can you do the same with 300? Maybe not.

And then there’s another thing. Today’s restaurateurs came of age in an era when creativity and innovation were paramount, and all that life-changing food was underwritten by cheap food and cheap labor, says Clark Wolf, a food business and restaurant consultant based in Northern California. “It was the Wild West —  the ‘let’s throw some uni at the wall and see if it sticks’ era,” he said. “It was very American.” 

Now, gravity is asserting itself: Most restaurants expect labor costs to continue to climb and the new Trump administration is promising tariffs that could blow up traditional restaurant economics. And so, chefs may turn to more practical models, like prix-fixe dining, which have worked in Europe for generations.

Wolf points to Troubadour in Healdsburg, California, which is run by a husband and wife team who formerly cooked at the destination restaurant Single Thread. Instead of starting a new place with a $425 tasting menu, they opened a spot that operates as a bakery and café by day with a prix-fixe-only dinner menu. 

“I see it as part of the maturation of the American restaurant world,” Wolf said. “Chefs finding a way to cook the food they want to make and also meet the market where it lives.”