Guides to your restaurant’s numbers
Plain answers to the questions owners ask about food cost, menu prices and running a tidy kitchen, with worked examples you can check on a calculator.
Guides
- Food cost percentage: the formula and a sensible target How to work it out for one dish and for a month, why the two differ, and how to set a target that fits your restaurant.
- How to calculate the food cost of a pizza, size by size A worked example for a pepperoni pizza in four sizes, and why the biggest pizza is often the least profitable one.
- How to cost a recipe when your supplier sells by the case Suppliers sell cases, cans and bags; recipes use grams, cups and slices. Here is how to connect the two.
- How to price a menu item from its food cost The formula, a worked example, and the checks that stop a good-looking percentage from hiding a poor margin.
- Restaurant opening and closing checklist A starting list for opening, closing and daily prep in a pizzeria or quick-service kitchen, plus the temperature checks to record.
- Franchise recipe management: one standard, every store’s real cost How a brand with a few stores keeps recipes consistent while each store pays its own prices.
- Restaurant P&L, line by line What each line of a restaurant’s monthly profit and loss means, what goes in it, and what to look at first.
- Prime cost and how to track it weekly Food plus labour as a share of sales: how to work it out, what to aim for, and how to check it before the month is over.
- Closing the month at a restaurant The checks to run before you call a month finished, and why locking it afterwards matters.
- Food temperature log: what to record and when Which temperatures to take, how often, and what to write down when one is out of range.
- Restaurant incident log What to record when something goes wrong on a shift, and how to follow it through to the end.
- Shift handover notes that get read How to hand a shift over in writing so the next team knows what matters before service.
- Running a franchise’s policies and announcements across stores How a brand keeps every store working from the same rules, contacts and news.
- Yield and trim: costing what you actually serve Why the price per kilogram you pay is not the price of what reaches the plate, and how to cost the difference.
- Gift cards for a small restaurant: how to run them The rules to settle before you sell the first card, and the routine that keeps every card matched to the till.
- Gift card laws in Canada and the US Expiry dates, fees and cash back on gift cards a restaurant sells, province by province and state by state, from the official sources.
Tools and definitions
Using Mezbano
How the app itself works, from costing rules to closing the month, is in the Mezbano guides.