Combos, Pairings and Add-ons: Cross-Selling on a Digital Menu
Upselling sells a bigger version of what the guest chose. Cross-selling sells something that goes with it: a side with the main, a drink with the burger, a dessert with the coffee. On a digital menu, the best cross-selling is not a separate step. It is built into how each dish is set up.
1. Option groups on the dish
The simplest cross-sell happens at the moment of choice. When a guest adds a dish, the options sheet offers sizes and add-on groups, each with its own price and a minimum and maximum choice: add chicken or prawns to the salad, choose a sauce for the steak.
Keep the groups short and relevant. Three good options outperform ten.
2. Pairings you choose
Pairings are the add-ons the menu suggests after a dish is added, such as fries with the burger or garlic bread with the pasta. Set them yourself, on your best sellers first, and choose items that genuinely belong together. A pairing that makes sense to a chef makes sense to a guest.
3. Curated set menus
For groups, families and celebrations, a set menu turns a long decision into one. Curated menus add a full multi-course meal in a single tap, with quantities the table can adjust before adding.
4. Combo campaigns
A combo is a promotion: a set price, or a reward, for buying items together. In Campaigns you can create a combo or bundle, a buy-one-get-one, or a spend-and-get offer. Combos work best when they nudge a guest towards a slightly bigger order than they planned, rather than discounting what they would have bought anyway.
5. The slide-up that completes a combo
When an order is one item away from a combo, the menu can say so: "add a hot drink to unlock the Sweet Ending". It appears once, never on checkout or payment, and only for dishes you can serve.
Measure what earns its place
Two measures tell you whether cross-selling works:
- Attach rate: the share of orders that include a starter, a dessert or a drink, compared with before.
- Best-performing pairings: which pairings guests actually accept. In the demo data, karak chai is the most accepted pairing with burgers and pizza.
Drop the pairings nobody takes, and give their place to ones that work. For techniques your servers can use, read upselling techniques that work. To set up option groups and pairings, see the menu builder.
