The most important input to any restaurant is the food – it’s the whole point of the dining out experience.

There are many operational expenses for restaurants – like rent, labor, utilities, and even marketing. But did you know that food cost takes up a large portion of those expenses? Having access to accurate food cost reporting can mean the difference between a restaurant making a profit or not.

If you want to effectively and efficiently calculate costs from goods sold and determine where you saved, overspent or where you were over charged, you should be utilizing the tech and data that is available to you. Technology like food costing software can save you time and money, help you monitor price fluctuations, and even reduce food waste.

Do you know how much your restaurant spends on food? If not, then it’s time to take a closer look at how you can get food costs back in line.

Understanding Your Food Costs

Before you determine the price of your menu items, you need better insight and control for your restaurant recipes and how much they cost to make. For restaurant owners an chefs, understanding recipe costs is essential to determining overall food costs, forecasting, making decisions about menu changes, and calculating impacts on profitability.

Knowing your recipe costs helps with menu pricing and plays an essential part in remaining profitable. Ingredient prices fluctuate with the seasons, recalls, and other external factors. When you start recipe costing, it might be a good idea to simplify the large task of your menu down to your top selling items first.

We sat down with the co-founder of Foodbam to discuss how recipe costing works and how it provides a clear picture of how restaurant’s prices affect profitability.

Improve Your Operation with The Right Food Cost Reporting

Receiving a detailed analysis of actual food usage vs. food costs and comparing trends over time gives you the bigger picture into what you are spending vs. what you are wasting. Running a restaurant, boils down to the efficiency of your inputs and your outputs.

Food cost control can be the hardest part of owning a restaurant. Understanding your Theoretical vs. Actual food cost can be one of the most difficult and daunting tasks for a chef or restaurant operator.

Usually a chef or restaurant owner must sit down and look at each invoice to see exactly what they are paying for each ingredient. Finding the right food cost reporting software can save you both time and money. By creating new meals and quickly costing out the recipes, you can keep your menu profitable and dynamic.

Why Foodbam is Your Food Cost Reporting Solution

All of your operation’s key metrics in one place? What a relief! Food cost reporting software like Foodbam automatically tracks your food spend and calculates your cost of goods sold without the hassle of invoice data entry or inventory counts.

The dashboard is updated daily to help keep your restaurant profitable, monitoring daily progress against your weekly budget. Get an overview of your Food/Beverage spend, sales and purchases. Connect your POS System or enter daily sales/labor to ensure you stay within budget.

Have questions about food cost reporting or other ways to best manage your restaurant’s costs? FoodBAM offers restaurants tools and insights to help manage their business. Interested in learning more? Request a demo!