Avocado Toast
Here’s the thing about avocado toast. We all know it’s simple, yet brunch spots can charge anywhere between twelve and eighteen dollars for what amounts to smashed fruit on bread. Restaurant pros estimate that a $10 avocado toast uses about a whole organic avocado at roughly $3, plus bread, sesame seeds, and garnishes, totaling around $3.50 in ingredients – approximately 35 percent of the menu price. The rest covers labor, rent, utilities, and everything else that keeps the doors open.
Let’s be real, though. That markup feels steep when you consider how quickly you can whip this up at home for a fraction of the cost. Industry experts openly acknowledge that restaurants are banking on the perceived trendiness of the dish to justify prices that far exceed actual ingredient costs. The Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills even charges a staggering $38 for their version, proving there’s seemingly no ceiling when branding meets brunch culture.
Eggs Benedict
Egg dishes reign supreme when it comes to profit margins at brunch. Adam Mali, chef at Nick’s Cove restaurant, revealed that the profit margin for an egg scramble hovers around 80 percent. Think about it – eggs are ridiculously cheap. A hearty plate of scrambled eggs for two might cost about $1.50 using fresh herbs and quality cheese, and even restaurant-style eggs Benedict can cost nearly 10 times less for two servings when made at home.
Restaurants capitalize on this because poached eggs and hollandaise sauce sound fancy and complicated. They’re not, really. Recent years saw wholesale egg prices soar to $7 or more per dozen due to avian flu outbreaks that began in 2022, with chains like Waffle House even adding temporary per-egg surcharges in February 2025. Still, the markup remains astronomical because once diners accept higher egg prices, restaurants rarely lower them even when wholesale costs drop again.
Mimosas And Brunch Cocktails
Brunch cocktails are where restaurants really clean up. A bartender can churn out dozens of mimosas in minutes, with per-drink costs often hovering around $1.15, making them one of the cheapest and most cost-effective options. Meanwhile, you’re probably paying eight to twelve dollars per glass. If you make mimosas at home using French Champagne for around $40, you get roughly 10 servings – but you might pay as much as $90 or more for the same amount in a restaurant.
The profit margins on cocktails generally are massive. Gross profit margins on cocktails typically range from 70 to 85 percent. Restaurants love brunch specifically because they can push these high-margin drinks alongside relatively inexpensive food items. Fine dining establishments are reviving the special-occasion brunch specifically to get customers to run up pricey bar tabs with spicy Bloody Marys and more. It’s honestly a brilliant business strategy, even if your wallet disagrees.
Pancakes And French Toast
Sweet breakfast items represent some of the most profitable menu categories. Restaurants spend less than $1 on the ingredients needed to make pancakes – flour, sugar, milk, and butter – yet customers typically pay around ten times that for a short stack. Foods like Belgian waffles, pancakes, and French toast require little prep time and have low ingredient costs, with items like thick-cut French toast costing about $12.
The markup here is staggering because the base ingredients are pantry staples that restaurants buy in enormous bulk quantities. Breakfast and brunch items prove very profitable since pancakes and waffles are made with simple batters, and egg omelets are often sold for double what it would cost to make them at home. Restaurants know you’re not going to make fluffy buttermilk pancakes on a lazy Sunday morning, so they’re betting on your convenience over your budget.
Pasta Dishes
When pasta shows up on a brunch menu, alarm bells should go off in your head about value. A serving of dry pasta costs about 25 cents, and even with homemade sauce, each serving only runs about $1.43 – yet a $13 pasta dish is marked up more than 800 percent. Restaurants price their pasta dishes at six to 10 times the cost of what it takes to make them.
Pasta is cheap, versatile, and fills people up quickly. Pasta has endured for years because it’s versatile, hearty peasant fare, with the noodles themselves costing a restaurant only a few cents. Unless you’re ordering something with housemade pasta or an incredibly complex sauce, you’re essentially paying restaurant prices for something you could throw together in 20 minutes at home. The perceived value just doesn’t match the actual cost, making it one of the sneakiest overpriced items hiding on brunch menus.
What do you think about these markups? Does knowing the real cost change how you order at brunch?
