Restaurant management built around the kitchen pass Seven modules, one order record, one login

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Module 03

A dish is a recipe. A recipe is a stock movement and a cost.

Once that is true, stock stops being a monthly argument. Firing a plate of biryani moves rice, chicken, ghee and gas out of the store, and the cost of that plate is known before the guest has paid for it.

Cost your top ten dishes Watch a deduction happen

Recipe card

Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani

Basmati rice, aged	220 g
Chicken, leg cut	250 g
Birista onion, sub recipe	40 g
Curd, whisked	80 g
Ghee	25 ml
Whole spice mix	9 g
Wastage allowance	4 percent

Cost per plate

Live figure

Follows supplier rates

Recalculated whenever a purchase rate changes

Why this is the margin module

Food cost is not one number. It is a hundred small decisions you cannot currently see.

Sub recipes are first class. A gravy base or a birista prepared in the morning is costed once, then consumed by every dish built on it, with its own yield.
Yield is respected. Two kilos of raw chicken is not two kilos of cooked portions, and the recipe accounts for that rather than pretending otherwise.
Modifiers change the deduction. A half portion, an extra paneer, or gravy on the side each move a different quantity of stock.
Rates carry history. When onion doubles in price, you can see exactly which dishes lost their margin and by how much, on which date.

The ledger

Six kinds of movement, each with a name attached.

Stock is an append only record, not a running total someone can edit. That is the only structure in which variance means anything.

Movement 01

Receipt

Goods in against a purchase order, with rate, quantity, batch and expiry where relevant. Short deliveries are recorded as short, not adjusted quietly.

Movement 02

Consumption

Posted by the pass. Every fired dish moves its recipe out of the store at the moment it is cooked.

Movement 03

Wastage

Spoilage, spillage, a dropped plate, a wrong order. Logged with a reason and a cost, because unlogged wastage is just unexplained variance.

Movement 04

Transfer

Between outlets or between a central kitchen and a branch, with both sides of the entry created together.

Movement 05

Staff meals

Recorded properly instead of vanishing into food cost, so your real food cost percentage means something.

Movement 06

Count adjustment

A physical count that disagrees with the ledger creates an adjustment entry with the variance visible, signed by the person who counted.

What you get out of it

Four reports an owner will actually open.

Report

Variance, daily

Expected consumption from recipes against actual movement from counts. A persistent gap on one ingredient at one outlet is a specific, investigable fact rather than a suspicion, and it is available the next morning instead of at month end.

Report

Cost per plate, and what changed it

Current cost of every dish, its contribution against selling price, and the rate change or recipe edit that moved it. Sorted by how much money the movement is worth across the volume you actually sell.

Report

Indent, tomorrow

What to buy, built from forecast demand, current stock, supplier lead time and shelf life. Editable before it is sent, because you know things the model does not.

Report

Low stock, before service

Items that will not survive the coming shift at forecast volume, ranked by how many dishes they block. Items that cross their floor mid service are taken off sale automatically so the counter cannot sell them.

Practical questions

Setting up recipes without stopping service.

Do we have to enter every recipe before we can start?

No, and we would advise against trying. Start with the twenty items that make most of your revenue, which is usually a small share of the menu, and add the rest over the following weeks. Uncosted items still sell normally, they simply do not deduct stock until they have a recipe.

Our chef cooks by feel, not by grams.

Most do. The practical approach is to weigh a few plates of each key dish during a quiet service and use the average. It will not be perfect on day one. It will still be far more accurate than a spreadsheet updated from memory, and the variance report tells you which recipes need correcting.

Can we handle bar stock and pegs?

Yes. Bottles are held with volume, pegs are recipes against that volume, and pour variance is reported the same way food variance is.

What about a central kitchen supplying branches?

The central kitchen produces sub recipes as stock items, transfers them to outlets, and each outlet consumes them through its own recipes. Costing follows the transfer, so a branch sees the true cost of what it received.

Next service

Send us three dishes. We will send back their real cost.

Give us the recipe as your chef describes it and your current purchase rates, and we will build the cost sheet and show you the contribution on each one.

Talk to us Staff & Shifts