Food Cost Control
What is ideal food cost versus actual food cost?
Direct answer
Ideal food cost is what the restaurant should have spent based on recipes and actual menu mix. Actual food cost is beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory. The gap is food cost variance.
Key points
- Ideal cost uses recipe costs multiplied by the actual quantity of each item sold.
- Actual cost uses inventory and purchases for the same period.
- Variance can come from waste, spoilage, theft, comps, receiving errors, price changes, or portion drift.
What to do next
- 1Multiply current recipe cost by units sold for every menu item to calculate ideal cost.
- 2Calculate actual usage as beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory.
- 3Subtract ideal cost from actual cost and investigate the largest ingredients and dishes first.