Per-dish impact
What the last year did to one dish.
The index moves in points. Your rent doesn't. Pick the commodity a dish leans on, say how much goes on the plate and how many you sell, and this turns twelve months of measured price movement into dollars per plate, per week and per year.
Read this before you quote the number
- — These are US city averages. They come from the BLS Average Price Data programme, which measures what shoppers pay across the country. They are not your supplier's price, your region's price, or a wholesale quote. What they are good for is the direction and rough magnitude of a market move.
- — Your invoice may have moved differently. If your supplier is up 21% and this says 19%, that's the market and the answer is repricing the dish. If this is flat and your invoice isn't, that's a conversation with your rep — see price creep.
- — Portion is as purchased. Trim, cooking loss and waste mean the weight you buy is bigger than the weight that reaches the guest. Enter the raw weight, or the figure will understate what the move cost you.
- — One ingredient, not the plate. This isolates a single commodity so the arithmetic stays checkable. A dish with beef, cheese and a bun moved on all three.
Where the numbers come from
Two real monthly observations from the same US Bureau of Labor Statistics series the food cost index is built on — twelve published months apart, with the months printed under the result. Series identifiers are on the methodology page, and the full history is a CSV download. Nothing here is smoothed, projected or seasonally adjusted.
Want the same arithmetic on your invoice prices instead of the national average? That is what the product does: Marji reads the invoice, maps the line to the dish and tells you which plates stopped clearing their target.
Get the monthly read.
What moved, what it does to a typical dish, and one thing worth repricing. One email, no pitch.