Restaurant · P&L and food cost

Your food cost isn't 26%. It's 29.2%.

The gap between what your menu says a plate costs and what your inventory says you spent is waste, over-portioning, comps and theft. On a million in sales it's $26,801 a year. This workbook finds it and shows you which plates it's hiding in. Works in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.
GET THE WORKBOOK $79
Works in Excel AND Google Sheets · instant download · Sheets script in the guide · free updates
Dashboard — theoretical against actual, with the gap in dollars

The gap has a number, and it's bigger than you think

Theoretical food cost is what your menu says you should have spent. Actual is what your inventory says you did. Almost nobody measures the distance between them.
01

True cost per usable ounce

Pack price converted to your portion unit, then divided by yield. Lettuce at 72% yield costs 39% more per usable ounce than the invoice says.

02

What the plate actually costs

Every recipe line priced off the ingredient list, plus a Q factor for the salt, oil and garnish nobody counts. Change a case price once and every plate re-costs.

03

Which items to fix and which to leave

Menu engineering scores every item on popularity against contribution margin, classes it, and tells you what to do about it.

What's inside

Every figure below is live in the file. Nothing here is a mockup.

Menu engineering, done for you

Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle or Dog for every item, with a written action next to each. Plus the ideal price for your target food cost and how far your current price sits from it.

  • Contribution margin in dollars, not just food cost %
  • Popularity measured against the 70% industry threshold
  • Ideal price and price gap per item
  • Food cost % flags red when it beats the category target
Menu tab — plate cost, margin and class for every item

A P&L built around prime cost

Twelve periods, every line as a percentage of net sales, with prime cost calculated and flagged. Sales, cost of goods and labor flow in automatically. You type the operating expenses and nothing else.

  • Food, beverage and alcohol cost against their own sales
  • Labor including taxes and benefits at your rate
  • Prime cost flagged red above your target
  • EBITDA and net margin by period and for the year
P&L — twelve periods with prime cost and % of net sales

The specifics

6,909
live formulas
9
tabs
300
ingredients
Excel + Sheets
works in both

Before you buy

Why $79 when there are $19 templates?
A $19 template gives you a grid to type food cost into. This one calculates it — yield-adjusted ingredient costs, recipe-driven plate costs, theoretical against actual, and the dollar figure in the gap. That number usually pays for the file in the first week.
Will this replace my accountant?
No. It gives you the numbers weeks before your accountant would, in a form you can act on while the month is still open.
Do I need Excel?
It works in both. Excel opens it as-is. For Google Sheets, upload it and run the one-minute setup script printed in the back of your setup guide — charts, color rules and dropdowns all rebuild automatically. Two small differences in Sheets are documented up front: in-cell data bars become color shading, and charts render with slightly different spacing. Every formula and every number is identical.
How long to set up?
Plan on a few hours for your ingredient list and your top twenty items — that is where most of the volume is. A twenty-item burger menu with a year of numbers is loaded so you can see it working first.
What if I do not count inventory?
Then you will get theoretical food cost and menu engineering, which is most of the value. Actual cost and the variance need a beginning and ending count. If you are not counting, this is the argument for starting.

Hard Numbers · Restaurant

The workbook plus a step-by-step setup guide. Works in Excel or Google Sheets. No login, no subscription, no seat count. Download it, open it, and put your own numbers in this afternoon.

$79
ONE TIME
30-day refund, no questions