How do you set your prices?

I was watching an episode of "Restaurant Impossible" yesterday on the DVR and he Chef Robert told the proprietor to take the base cost of each dish and multiply it by 3 to get the menu price. I've heard this before and wondered if this was the method everyone uses. 

We generally take the cost of an item and multiply it by 3 or 4. There have been some exceptions to this but in general, it's what we do. We also add in the tax and round up. i have a spreadsheet for my pricing so I can set up a multiplier and then set my selling price manually. the spreadsheet then will figure my tax and pretax selling price.