The Culinary Cost Control Center

A case of bone-in short rib at $92 is $9.20 a pound. After the bone, the fat and the braise, forty-five percent of it reaches a plate, so every pound you serve costs $20.44. A recipe costed at the invoice price understates one of the most expensive lines on the menu by more than half. Then the case goes up to $92 from $80.50, the portion creeps, and nobody re-costs anything.

This is the workbook that re-costs it. Change one price and every dish, menu and order that uses it follows.

What it does

• The Price Book. Everything you buy, from the last invoice: the pack, the pack price, the usable yield and the last price you paid. Price rises are flagged, largest first.
• Recipes and prep recipes. Ingredients in whatever units the recipe uses, from grams to quarts to each. Stocks, sauces and doughs are costed as batches and used by the portion. The cost of a portion, food cost %, the price at your target and a nine-allergen matrix appear as you type.
• Menu engineering. Every dish judged against the others in its own category, by the Kasavana & Smith method, as a Star, Workhorse, Puzzle or Dog, with what to do about each.
• The order guide. Pick one menu, or every menu between two dates, and it tells you what to buy, by supplier, in whole packs, and what the order will cost. Prep items add their own ingredients.
• Food cost and waste. Close each month on actual against theoretical. Log waste at the end of a shift and the Waste Center turns it into a cost a year, and the saving if you cut it by a quarter.
• The dashboard. Food cost against target, the dishes over it, the prices that moved, and the menu matrix, on one page.
• Recipe cards. Any dish printed for the line at any batch size, with its method and allergens.

You can check every number

The Method sheet explains each formula in words and names the source behind each default: the USDA yield method, Kasavana & Smith, the EPA’s food waste assessment guide, the nine major US allergens. Where no reliable benchmark exists, it says so and calls the number a goal. The worked example, a fictional caterer called Linden & Rye, was recalculated independently of the workbook and matched to the cent before release.

What it is not

It is not accounting software, a point-of-sale system or an inventory scanner. It does not read your invoices; you type the last price in. The allergen matrix knows only what you tell it about each ingredient. It cannot see cross-contact or a supplier’s change of recipe, so confirm every label.

What you need

Microsoft Excel 2019 or later, or Microsoft 365. It was tested in Excel for Windows. No macros, no add-ins and no internet connection. It does not run in Google Sheets or Numbers yet.

The rest of the line

Everything here is also inside The Catering Operations System, The Private Chef Business Command Center and The Luxury Catering Business Operating System.