Promotion ROI Calculator

It measures whether a promotion or campaign actually made money. It takes the incremental orders the promo generated, multiplies them by the average check to get incremental revenue, applies your margin and a cannibalisation factor to find the real incremental margin, then subtracts the promo cost. The result is net margin, ROI % and ROAS, plus the break-even number of orders the promo needed just to pay for itself.

Cannibalisation is the share of promo sales that would have happened anyway at full price. A 2-for-1 aperitivo, for example, attracts new customers but also gives a discount to regulars who would have come regardless. If 20% of the promo orders are cannibalised, only 80% of the incremental margin is genuinely new, so the calculator discounts the incremental margin accordingly. Ignoring cannibalisation is the most common way restaurants overstate promo ROI.

ROAS (return on ad spend) compares revenue to spend, while ROI compares profit to spend. A promo can show a healthy ROAS yet a negative ROI if the margin on the extra revenue does not cover the discount and costs. For hospitality, ROI on margin is the figure that tells you whether the promotion was worth running; ROAS is a top-line sanity check.

Break-even orders = total promo cost divided by (average check x margin %). It tells you the minimum number of genuinely new orders required just to recover the promo cost. Comparing your actual incremental orders to this break-even point is the fastest way to judge whether the campaign worked.

Include every euro spent to run the promotion: the discount value given away, free items or upgrades, advertising spend, printing, platform fees and any staff overtime tied to the event. Leaving costs out inflates the ROI and leads to repeating promotions that quietly lose money.