Why discounts and promos usually make restaurants poorer, not busier

Discounts feel like an easy win. Lower the price, attract more customers, increase volume, and make up the difference later.

In practice, discounts rarely fix restaurant problems. They usually make them worse — quietly and permanently.

Discounts treat symptoms, not causes

Most restaurants use discounts when sales slow down. But slow sales are rarely the root issue.

The real problems are usually pricing errors, weak margins, poor menu structure, or operational inefficiencies. Discounts don’t fix any of these. They temporarily hide them.

Lower prices create activity, not profitability.

Discounts attract the wrong kind of demand

Promotions don’t attract loyal customers. They attract price-sensitive ones.

These customers:

• leave when the discount ends
• rarely order high-margin items
• increase operational pressure
• amplify mistakes in pricing and portions

Restaurants end up working harder for customers who contribute less — or nothing — to profit.

Volume doesn’t compensate for bad margins

A discounted dish that already has thin margins becomes dangerous.

When price drops but costs stay the same, every order increases losses. Higher volume doesn’t “make up for it”. It accelerates the damage.

Many restaurants run promotions believing volume will save them, only to find cash flow tighter than before.

Discounts reset customer expectations

Once customers get used to lower prices, raising them becomes harder.

What was meant to be temporary turns into a new baseline. Margins never fully recover, and restaurants are forced to discount again just to maintain traffic.

This is how discount dependency starts — and it’s difficult to escape.

Promos expose weak menu economics

Discounts only work when margins are strong and controlled.

If a restaurant doesn’t know:

• which items can absorb a discount
• which items should never be discounted
• how discounts affect margins per channel

then promotions become blind bets.

Most restaurants don’t lose money because they discount once. They lose money because they discount without understanding item-level profitability.

Growth should come from structure, not price cuts

Healthy growth comes from:

• pricing that reflects real costs
• menus designed around contribution, not popularity
• operational consistency
• clear visibility into margins

Discounts should be tactical tools, not survival strategies.

Stop buying volume at the expense of profit

Discounts feel proactive. They feel like action. But action without clarity is expensive.

If discounts are the only way to drive traffic, the problem isn’t demand — it’s economics. And seeing exactly which items can handle price pressure and which ones are already fragile is the difference between controlled promotions and self-inflicted losses, which is precisely the kind of decision-making clarity Kyze is built to support when restaurants want to grow without destroying margins.

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