Sample result
Daily Kitchen Checklist Builder for Restaurants
The owner asked this:"My kitchen covers the basics, but every plate goes out differently and food cost will not drop below 34 %. I want a sheet the station can run on its own from Monday to Sunday."
① The five phases of the station
The Laureles kitchen, Monday to Sunday, guided by the product and not by the clock. Receiving lands between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m., storage as each delivery is closed, production from 9:30 to 11:30, service inside Tuesday-to-Friday lunch, and station close when the last plate leaves the pass.
| Phase | Control point | Measure and unit | Role that signs | Consequence if it comes out NO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving | Meat and trout at unloading | 0 to 4 °C, weight against the invoice | Head chef | Sent back on the bay and the supplier is logged |
| Receiving | Frozen goods | −18 °C or lower, no frost on the packaging | Head chef | Never enters the freezer; it goes on the day's record |
| Storage | Container label | Date, hour and use-by written | Cold-kitchen assistant | Weighed as waste and never served |
| Storage | FIFO rotation | Oldest at the front, checked 1 time a day | Cold-kitchen assistant | The shelf is reordered before production starts |
| Production | Cooking the sancocho meats | 74 °C at the centre | Hot-line cook | The dish does not reach the pass |
| Production | Cooling the beans | From 60 °C to 21 °C within 2 hours | Hot-line cook | The batch is discarded and logged as waste |
| Service | Portion weight of the three stars | 1 g scale next to the pass | Pass cook | The portion is corrected inside the shift |
| Service | Hot holding | Above 63 °C, every 2 hours | Pass cook | Reheated to 74 °C once, or discarded |
| Close | Waste of the day | Grams and a written cause | Head chef | The sheet is not handed over without the cause |
Nine points, not one more. The sheet fits on half a page because every point added lowers the odds that any of them gets truly measured. Illustrative figures, built from the data you gave.
② Portion weight against the recipe
Ten plates per dish, across two Tuesday-to-Friday lunch services, with different hands and no warning the day before. The 1 g scale lives beside the pass, not in the storeroom.
| Dish | Menu price | Recipe weight | Served weight | Deviation | Recipe food cost | Served food cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bandeja de la casa | 42.000 COP | 720 g, with 90 g of minced beef | 742 g, with 110 g of minced beef | +20 g of meat | 34,0 % | 35,2 % |
| Sancocho de tres carnes | 34.000 COP | 180 g of protein in 450 ml of broth | 197 g of protein | +17 g of the mix | 33,0 % | 34,1 % |
| Trucha al ajillo | 38.000 COP | 180 g of portioned fillet | 178 g | −2 g | 35,0 % | 34,9 % |
The trout does not drift, and the reason is not discipline: the fillet arrives portioned and weighed from the supplier, so the hand does not decide. Where the cook serves with a ladle —the minced beef of the bandeja, the three-meat mix of the sancocho— the portion grows. That is where the leak is, and it closes with a calibrated 90 g ladle and the portion weight posted at eye level on the pass, not with a telling-off on Monday.
One finding that changes the conversation: Trucha al ajillo already runs at 35,0 % with the CORRECT portion. It does not fit under the 32 % ceiling of a promoted item, not even by cutting the fillet to 158 g, which would send complaints back from the table. There the problem is neither the offer nor the hand: it is the menu price, which would have to move from 38.000 to 41.600 COP to sit under the ceiling. Illustrative figures.
③ The 20 grams nobody invoices
The sum is done once and understood forever. A gram of minced beef costs 26 COP, because the kilo comes in at 26.000 COP.
| Item | Bandeja de la casa | Sancocho de tres carnes |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe cost | 14.280 COP | 11.220 COP |
| Excess served | 20 g by 26 COP = 520 COP | 17 g by 22 COP = 374 COP |
| Real cost of the plate | 14.800 COP | 11.594 COP |
| Recipe and real food cost | 34,0 % to 35,2 % | 33,0 % to 34,1 % |
| Plates sold a month | 640 | 410 |
| Monthly leak | 332.800 COP | 153.340 COP |
That is 486.140 COP a month across two dishes, 5.833.680 COP over twelve months, and there is not a single invoice where it shows: the supplier charged the same, the till charged the same and inventory closed without a jolt. That leak lives between the ladle and the plate.
Now the honest reading, which is the one that prevents panic. Against the 214.000.000 COP of monthly sales, the leak weighs 0,2 points of food cost, not 1,2. The 1,2 is what THE DISH loses; the 0,2 is what THE HOUSE loses, because these two dishes are not the whole menu. The two figures serve different purposes: the dish figure rules in the kitchen and decides whether the ladle gets calibrated; the house figure rules over the yearly goal and says how much of the distance between 8 % and 14 % operating margin is settled here. Calibrating the ladle will not get you there; not calibrating it will not either. Illustrative figures, built from the data you gave.
The full example has 2 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.