Guides
Working notes from live sites: costing, pricing, profitability, development and the compliance detail that catches operators out. Written to be used during a shift rather than read on a train.
Eight guides in four groups. Each one starts with the problem and ends with the arithmetic.
Food cost
What a dish really costs, and where the gap between costed and actual goes.
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Start here
Food cost control: the eleven leaks that show up on every audit
Read this if food GP is below target and nobody can say why.
Theoretical food cost and actual food cost are never the same number. The gap between them is where your margin is going. This is the full list of places it hides, in the order worth closing them.
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How to calculate food cost, per dish, per menu and per week
Read this if you want to work out food cost properly, per dish, per menu and per week.
The formula takes one line, and most kitchens still get the number wrong. The VAT step, yield, and the gap between the costed figure and the stock take, with the working shown.
Pricing and sales
Setting prices that hold, and growing the bill without giving the margin away.
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How to price a menu when the numbers have to work
Read this if you are pricing a dish or a whole menu.
The formula most guides give you returns a net figure. Put that on a UK menu and you have lost six points of gross profit before you start. The arithmetic done properly, and the structure that goes on top of it.
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How to increase restaurant sales without giving the profit away
Read this if sales are flat and you want to grow them without discounting.
Sales are covers times spend, and the right lever depends on where the gap is. What price changes, discounts and an extra course are worth in cash, and why a discount has to win far more orders than it appears to.
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How to increase average spend per cover without raising prices
Read this if covers are steady and you want each one to earn more.
Spend per cover is items per cover times price per item. How to calculate it net of VAT, what moves it without a price rise, and why the same extra £1.00 can be worth very different amounts in cash.
The menu and the kitchen
How the wording sells a dish, and what each dish costs the section to send.
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How to write menu descriptions that sell without overclaiming
Read this if some dishes earn well but nobody orders them.
On most menus the wording does nothing at all, and it is the cheapest thing to change. A four part method, before and after examples, where the words are worth spending, and the claims that have to be true.
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The labour cost hidden in your menu
Read this if dishes look fine on GP but the kitchen is drowning.
Two dishes can return the same gross profit and cost completely different amounts to put out. Why food GP alone will never show you that, and how to find the dishes eating your section's day.
Opening and compliance
Building a menu from scratch, and keeping the allergen information right.
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How to open a restaurant in the UK, from the kitchen side
Read this if you are opening a restaurant and the menu is not done.
Most checklists cover the premises and the paperwork. This is the order for the menu and kitchen: cost the menu before the lease, work out break-even covers, let the dishes decide the equipment, and trial before opening.
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Allergens on a UK menu: what the law asks of a restaurant, pub or cafe
Read this if you need to be sure your allergen information is right.
The 14 allergens, loose food against food prepacked for direct sale, what Natasha's Law adds, and how a kitchen keeps the information true when the menu and the suppliers keep changing.
Also useful while you read.
By menu section
The full method
In development: filling a restaurant midweek without discounting, running a development sprint across several sites, and negotiating with suppliers as a single site.
Rather have the analysis than the reading?
A menu audit does all of this against your own numbers and comes back with a ranked list of what to change first.