Weekly Food Cost %: The Number Every Restaurant Owner Must Know by Monday Morning
- What Food Cost % Actually Means
- The Four Drivers of Food Cost Overrun
- Theoretical vs Actual Food Cost
- Setting a Weekly Food Cost Target That Drives Action
- AskBiz + Xero: Automated Weekly Food Cost Reporting
- Worked Example: Diagnosing a 5-Point Overrun
- Menu Engineering: Pricing Around Food Cost, Not Just Popularity
A restaurant running a 36% food cost when the budget says 30% is losing 6p in profit on every £1 of food revenue. On £12,000/week in food sales, that's £720/week — £37,440/year — disappearing into waste, over-portioning, theft, or supplier price creep. AskBiz tracks food cost weekly against your target, so you catch the drift in week one, not at the quarterly P&L review.
- What Food Cost % Actually Means
- The Four Drivers of Food Cost Overrun
- Theoretical vs Actual Food Cost
- Setting a Weekly Food Cost Target That Drives Action
- AskBiz + Xero: Automated Weekly Food Cost Reporting
What Food Cost % Actually Means#
Food cost percentage is the cost of ingredients as a proportion of food revenue. If you sell a dish for £14 and the ingredients cost £4.20, the food cost is 30%. Your target food cost % depends on your segment: fast casual typically targets 28–32%, full-service restaurants 30–35%, fine dining can run higher because of premium ingredients and higher menu prices. The number matters because it's the largest controllable cost in your business — labour can be scheduled around demand, but food cost is a daily management discipline that either is or isn't working.
The Four Drivers of Food Cost Overrun#
Supplier price increases not reflected in menu prices — your chicken breast has gone up 18% since you last revised the menu. Over-portioning — your portion guide says 180g of protein but the grill chef is eyeballing 210g. Waste — prep waste, spoilage, and mis-fires that go unreported and untracked. Theft — staff eating on shift without recording, or more serious diversion. A food cost overspend almost always has one or two dominant causes. Finding them requires weekly tracking against a theoretical food cost — the cost that should result if every recipe is followed exactly.
Theoretical vs Actual Food Cost#
Your POS knows what was sold. Your recipes define what each item should cost. Multiplying menu mix by recipe cost gives you theoretical food cost — what you should have spent on food this week if everything went to plan. Your actual food cost is what you actually spent (opening stock + purchases − closing stock). The gap between theoretical and actual is your variance: over-portioning, waste, theft, or unrecorded staff meals. If your theoretical food cost is 29% but your actual is 35%, 6% of revenue went somewhere unexplained. AskBiz calculates both numbers weekly using your POS sales data and supplier invoice data.
Setting a Weekly Food Cost Target That Drives Action#
Your annual food cost target sits in your P&L budget. Break it down to a weekly number — if you're targeting 31% annually, your weekly target is 31%. Measure every Monday: last week's food revenue from POS (e.g., £9,400), last week's food purchases plus stock movement (e.g., £3,290), food cost % = 35%. You're 4 points over. Call a chef meeting Tuesday morning: review portion control, check supplier invoices for price changes, conduct a waste log review for the week. Fix it before it compounds. Three weeks of 35% food cost on £9,400 weekly revenue is £1,128 in unexpected cost — a staff member's week of wages.
AskBiz + Xero: Automated Weekly Food Cost Reporting#
Connecting AskBiz to your POS sales data and Xero supplier invoices automates the weekly food cost calculation. By Monday morning, your AskBiz dashboard shows last week's food cost %, compared to your target and to the prior four weeks. If you're trending up, you see it visually. You can drill into which supplier invoices drove the highest spend and compare against your theoretical cost by menu category. The restaurant owner who previously spent two hours on Monday reconstructing this from spreadsheets now gets the answer in thirty seconds.
Worked Example: Diagnosing a 5-Point Overrun#
A 60-cover bistro in Bristol targeted 31% food cost. Week ending in early October came in at 36% — £9,600 in food revenue against £3,456 in purchases and stock movement, versus a theoretical cost of 31.5% based on menu mix. The 4.5-point gap between theoretical and actual pointed straight at execution, not pricing. The chef pulled the waste log: two deliveries of fish had been rejected for quality and not recorded as returns, meaning the invoice cost was booked but no food was received — a £340 paperwork gap alone. A portion audit on the signature steak dish found the grill section plating 240g instead of the specified 200g, adding roughly £1.10 of cost to every one of the 140 steaks sold that week — £154. Combined, those two issues accounted for most of the variance. Fixing both brought the following week back to 32%.
Menu Engineering: Pricing Around Food Cost, Not Just Popularity#
Not every dish needs to hit your target food cost % individually — a blended target across the menu is what matters. High-margin dishes (pasta, vegetarian mains) can run at 22–26% food cost, cross-subsidising signature proteins that might run at 38–42% but drive covers through the door. The mistake many owners make is pricing every dish to the same target margin, which either overprices the crowd-pleasers or underprices the expensive centrepiece dishes. Review your top ten sellers quarterly against their individual food cost, and use the ones running comfortably under target to absorb small price increases on ingredient-heavy dishes rather than raising every price on the menu at once.
People also ask
What is a good food cost percentage for a restaurant?
Typically 28–35%, depending on segment. Fast food and fast casual: 28–32%. Casual dining: 30–34%. Fine dining: 32–38% (offset by higher menu prices and labour efficiency). The benchmark matters less than your own target — set it, track it weekly, and close the gap when you miss it.
How do I calculate food cost without a formal stocktake?
Use the formula: (Opening stock + Purchases − Closing stock) ÷ Food revenue. You need a weekly count of perishables (rough is fine) and your supplier invoices from Xero. AskBiz structures the calculation automatically once you connect your data sources.
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