Food cost gap
Count what's on the shelf, put in what sold, and see what the kitchen used against what your recipes say it should have. The gap in dollars and points, the ingredients behind it, and what a plate really gets.
Help and background Back to the tool
How it works
- 1 Pick the days: a week is a good length. Each count after the first starts the day after the last one ended.
- 2 Put in how many of each dish sold. Paste the item sales report from your till, or fill from each dish's usual week as an estimate.
- 3 Count what's on hand at the end, in whatever unit is easiest. What was there at the start carries over from your last count, and what came in fills from the deliveries in your price book.
- 4 The page works out what the kitchen used and what the recipes say those sales should have used, both priced from your price book.
- 5 It shows the gap in dollars and points of food cost, the ingredients behind it, and what a plate really got. Save the count, and the next one starts where it ended.
Free, with a free account: it works from your price book and the recipes in the menu margin alert. Signed out, you can try a made-up example, and nothing is sent or kept.
Good to know
- What's a point of food cost?
- Food cost is what the ingredients cost as a share of sales. If the recipes say a week's sales should have used 28% and the count says 30% went, the gap is 2 points. Sales here are before tax, as your menu prices are.
- Where does a gap come from?
- Usually a few ordinary things: generous portions, waste and spoilage, staff meals, comps, a recipe that's changed in the kitchen but not on paper, a delivery that wasn't logged, or a miscount. The page lists the likely ones for each ingredient. You know your kitchen: it points to where to look, not who to blame. Logging waste as it happens, in the waste log, explains a lot of it.
- Do I have to count everything?
- No. The count lists what the dishes that sold use, and you can count only the costly ones: proteins, cheese, oil, coffee. What isn't counted is left out of the gap, and the page says how much of the recipes' use that leaves out. Count the same things each time and the trend means the most.
- Where are my counts kept?
- In your LocoTap account, next to your price book and recipes, for you alone. They're never put in a link or our logs, and the sales report you paste is read on the page, not sent. Each count keeps its numbers as they were worked out on the day, so a later price or recipe change doesn't rewrite your history. Remove a count any time.
A guide to where your stock goes, not accounting advice.
Where it fits in a restaurant
Every week Prices in, margins checked, the counts against the sales, and next week's pars.
A hand-off only moves when you press it, and never through a link: signed in, the next tool reads your account's book; signed out, it waits in this browser until the next tool picks it up.
Every week
More for this part of the day
Ingredient price book
Put in each delivery as it comes. Every ingredient keeps its own price line, so you see the day something jumps, which supplier was cheaper last time, and how fast your own costs are rising.
Save it: every price you've paid, in your account
Menu margin alert
Your dishes, costed from your price book. When a delivery comes in dearer, see which plates lost margin since you set their price, by how much and why, and the price that wins it back.
Save it: your dishes and their recipes, in your account
Bar inventory by weight
Put each open bottle on a kitchen scale and read what's left in it to the millilitre. Count the shelf in minutes, see what the bar poured against what the till rang, which bottles run heavy and by how much a pour, and what to order.
Save it: your bottles and shelf counts, in your account
Par levels by weekday
Put in what sold each day and see how much to prep for each weekday, from your own usual days. Holidays and Oktoberfest are on the calendar, odd days stay out of the sums, and the AI can draft how next week may differ.
Save it: your daily sales by item, in your account
Staff schedule maker
Build the week's shifts over your busy hours. It flags Ontario break, rest and overtime rules as you go, then prints for the back-room wall.
Save it: a shared staff calendar
Prime cost check
Put in a week's sales, what the food and drinks cost and everyone on staff, and see prime cost as a share of sales, with vacation pay, CPP and EI on top of wages. See which days ran heavy on staff, three ways to get to your own target, every week side by side, and print a report for the week.
Save it: your weeks, staff and rates