What sold, against what it cost to make. The number every kitchen is judged on, live.
The page
Pick a date and a venue. Food Only or All Categories, and an item filter.
Food Only is usually what you want — a food cost percentage that includes cocktails is not a food cost percentage.
The cards
Revenue — what the items earned.
Food cost — what they cost to make.
Gross profit — the difference.
Food cost % — cost divided by revenue. The number.
Linked — how many items have a recipe attached, out of how many sold.
Read Linked first
Everything else on this page is only as true as that number.
1 of 243 items means one dish has a recipe and 242 do not. The food cost percentage is then computed from one dish — it is arithmetically correct and completely meaningless.
An unlinked item contributes its revenue and no cost. So the more items are unlinked, the better your food cost looks. A low food cost percentage with a low Linked count is not good news. It is missing data.
Fix it on the Menu page: link the POS item to its recipe.
The table
Item — as your POS sells it.
Linked — whether it has a recipe.
Qty — how many sold.
Revenue — what it earned.
Unit cost — what one costs to make.
Cost % — for that dish.
Total — cost across everything sold.
A — in the cost columns means not linked. That row is revenue with no cost behind it.
What to look at
The outliers, not the average. A venue at 28% is made of dishes at 19% and dishes at 44%. The average tells you nothing you can act on; the spread tells you what to change.
High cost % and high volume is where the money is. A dish at 45% that sells three a week is a rounding error. A dish at 38% that sells forty a night is your problem.
Suspiciously low cost % is usually a recipe with a missing ingredient price, not a bargain. See Ingredients.
Live
The date picker defaults to today, and today moves. Food cost during service is a pace, not a result.
Yesterday is the honest read.
What it needs to work
Three things, in order:
- Ingredients with prices — from invoices
- Recipes — with those ingredients, at real quantities
- Menu links — POS item to recipe
Break any one and this page lies quietly. That is the whole chain, and it is why food cost is the last thing you set up rather than the first.
Next
Inventory Count — what is actually on the shelf.