How to control a restaurant's inventory (food cost)

Why restaurant inventory is another sport

A store sells the same thing it buys: a shirt comes in, a shirt comes out. A restaurant buys kilos of tomatoes and sells dishes — the conversion between what enters and what leaves goes through recipes, portions and losses. Without that bridge, your theoretical inventory means nothing.

The consequence: most restaurants only know their global food cost (purchases of the month / sales of the month) and discover the problems weeks late, when they have already eaten up the margin. The real control is per dish and per input, every day.

The basis: standardized recipes with cost

It all starts with the technical sheet of each dish: ingredients, exact amount per serving and updated cost. With that you obtain the theoretical cost of the dish and you can set prices with a real margin, not with intuition.

• Weigh and document each recipe ONCE with your cook: grams, milliliters, pieces. Includes oil, garnishes and sauce that "don't count."
• Calculate the cost per dish with current purchase prices. Rule of reference: the food cost per dish should be around 28-35% of the sales price.
• Mark your star dishes (high margin + high sales) and your problem dishes (low margin or low turnover): the menu is designed with that data.
• Update costs when purchase prices change — automatic if your system links purchases to recipes.

The automatic discount: each sale lowers inputs

Here is the difference between controlling and believing that you control: when the waiter orders the order, the system must deduct from the inventory the ingredients for the recipe — 180 g of flank steak, 90 g of cheese, 2 tortillas. At the end of the day you have a theoretical inventory of inputs calculated dish by dish.

That theoretical is compared against periodic physical counts. The difference (variance) is your golden number: if the system says you should have 4 kg of cheese and there is 2.8, you have 1.2 kg of leakage — large portions, unrecorded shrinkage, or something that went out the back door.

Shrinkage, portions and purchases: the three fronts of flight

• Waste: records EVERYTHING that is thrown away (expired, burned, returned) for a reason. What is not recorded cannot be attacked. Healthy goal: registered loss of less than 3-5% of purchases.
• Portions: audit the griddle with a scale once a week. A 200 g portion served as 240 g is 20% of an invisible extra cost on your signature dish.
• Purchases: Purchase against projected consumption, not against "running out." Your system should suggest the purchase order based on expected sales and current stock, by supplier.
• Reception: weigh what arrives. The difference between the kilo invoiced and the kilo received is a leak at the entrance door.

The weekly routine that keeps food costs at bay

Control is not a one-time project: it is a short, constant routine. The one that works: daily count of 10-15 critical inputs (proteins, cheeses, liquors — 10 minutes), complete weekly kitchen and bar count, weekly review of theoretical vs. actual variance, and adjustment of prices or recipes when an input rises above a certain threshold.

With Aura Restaurant, orders discount inputs per recipe, losses are recorded from the cell phone, the variance is calculated by itself and purchases are suggested by consumption. The food cost goes from being a monthly mystery to a daily dashboard. Try 14 days for $14 USD.