How do I manage food costs in a restaurant?
The Real Problem with Food Costs
Food costs in a restaurant are managed by accurately tracking ingredient prices, portion sizes and yield within each recipe. Without a recipe at the very least, costs quickly become outdated, margins are guessed, and decisions are based on poor or inconsistent data.
Even with recipes, most kitchens are still working from a moment in time. If recipes aren't regularly updated for weights, yields, costs and allergens, they lose accuracy very quickly.
What's actually happening in most kitchens
Most kitchens still:
- Update ingredient prices manually
- Recalculate margins dish by dish
- Rely on spreadsheets that go out of date
Every price change creates a ripple effect — but nothing updates automatically.
What actually works
To manage food costs properly, you need:
- Recipes as the single source of truth
- Live ingredient pricing
- Automatic margin calculation
- Visibility across every dish and every team member
Where kitchens lose margin
Margins aren't just lost on pricing.
They're lost through:
- Time spent updating spreadsheets
- Re-entering the same data across disconnected systems
- Incorrect or outdated supplier pricing
- Inconsistent portion control
How Prepsheets solves this
Prepsheets connects recipes to the systems your kitchen already uses, with an integrated supplier ingredient intelligence layer.
That means:
- Update a price once → every recipe updates
- Change an ingredient → costs, margins, allergens, nutrition and portions update automatically
- Every dish has live, accurate costing
- Margins are always visible
- Menu data (costs, allergens, etc.) can be pushed directly to your EPOS
- Supplier orders are generated automatically based on stock levels and production plans
No re-entry. No guesswork. No manual duplication.
Bottom line
If your recipes aren't a living system, you're losing money. Download our free recipe costing Excel template to benchmark your current recipes — and see exactly where your margins and allergens stand today.