Topic · 6 guides
By restaurant type
The cost structure, the traps and the numbers that matter — for pizzerias, cafés, food trucks, bars and the rest.
Guides in this topic
- By restaurant type
QR Code Menus for Food Trucks: Setup, Placement and Daily Changes
How a food truck can use a QR code menu at the window: when it helps, where to put the code, and how to handle sell-outs, event prices and today's location.
· 5 min read - By restaurant type
How to Calculate Pour Cost for Liquor, Beer and Wine: Bottle, Keg and Glass Math
Cost a spirit pour, a cocktail, a draft pint and a glass of wine from bottle and keg sizes, then measure actual pour cost from inventory and find where the gap comes from.
· 7 min read - By restaurant type
Bakery Batch Cost After Bake Loss and Unsold Portions
Cost a bakery batch from ingredient purchases to finished portions, then separate bake yield, rejects and unsold stock with a reproducible worksheet example.
· 4 min read - By restaurant type
Coffee Shop Drink Cost: Coffee, Milk, Cup and Waste
Calculate two café drink sizes from weighed coffee, measured milk and packaging, then keep pitcher waste and ingredient-price changes visible in the recipe.
· 4 min read - By restaurant type
Food Truck Costs: Where the Room for a Higher Food Cost Comes From
Why a food truck can carry a higher food cost: in a hypothetical $18,000 month, commissary, fuel and fees cost about what rent does, and the room comes from a smaller crew. Plus booking break-even.
· 4 min read - By restaurant type
Pizzeria Food Cost: Cheese Portions, Dough and the Box
Cost a pizza from dough to packaging and measure what an extra half ounce of cheese costs at your own portion size, supplier price and weekly sales volume.
· 3 min read
Terms these guides define
- 86
- Kitchen shorthand for an item that is no longer available for the rest of service.
- Pour cost
- Food cost percentage for the bar — beverage cost divided by beverage sales.
- Free pour vs. jigger
- Pouring by eye versus by measure — a difference that shows up directly in pour cost.
- Recipe yield
- How many finished portions a recipe actually produces, measured rather than assumed.
- Sub-recipe
- A recipe used as an ingredient in other recipes — stock, sauce, dough, compound butter.
- Waste percentage
- The share of purchased food that is thrown away rather than sold — spoilage, overproduction, errors and returns.
- Menu mix (PMIX)
- The share of total sales each menu item represents — the weights behind every menu-level average.
- Par level
- The quantity of an item you want on hand at the start of each order cycle — enough to cover demand plus a safety buffer.
- Average check
- Total sales divided by covers — the single most leveraged number in a restaurant's revenue line.
- Covers
- The number of guests served in a period — the denominator behind average check, labour per cover and cost per cover.
- Break-even point
- The sales volume at which total revenue exactly covers total cost — the number below which you are paying to open.
- Fixed vs. variable cost
- Fixed costs don't move with sales; variable costs do. Most restaurant labour is neither, and that's where planning goes wrong.
- Contribution margin
- The dollars a dish contributes to overhead and profit after its ingredient cost — menu price minus plate cost.
- Portion control
- Keeping served portions equal to specced portions — the difference between the food cost you calculated and the one you get.
- Prime cost
- Total cost of goods sold plus total labor cost — the two numbers that decide whether a restaurant survives.
- Third-party commission
- The percentage a delivery marketplace takes from each order — DoorDash's and Uber Eats' published delivery plans run 15–30% — charged on the order subtotal.