Who is this assistant for?

You keep repeating a food cost someone worked out two years ago that no longer describes the kitchen you run today. You know what your recipes say the food should cost, but you have never set it beside what actually left the storeroom. You know food is walking out somewhere and you have no idea where to start looking.

Most owners repeat a food cost somebody computed once and that no longer describes their kitchen. This assistant computes it properly, separates actual from theoretical and prices the monthly difference, because an uninvestigated three-point gap is money walking out the back door.

AI assistant · N2 Ready-to-use piece

◆ Included in the annual plan🧮 Costs, Pricing and Profitabilityv1.2.1 · 2026-08-26

Food Cost Analyzer for Restaurants

Computes your actual food cost from inventories and purchases, faces it against the theoretical from your recipes, and prices the monthly gap with the three most likely leaks.

Depth

9/23

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N2Ready-to-use piece

Produces a piece you can use as-is: a menu description, a service script, a supplier email. Copy and go.

◆ This assistant 7 of the 164 published assistants are at this level

Is this for you?

What it does and what you get

Most owners repeat a food cost somebody computed once and that no longer describes their kitchen.
This assistant computes it properly, separates actual from theoretical and prices the monthly difference, because an uninvestigated three-point gap is money walking out the back door.

What you end up with

Your actual and theoretical food cost for the month, the gap between them in points and in money, and a short plan with the three most likely leaks and one action each.

EXAMPLE This is what you getAn example built with Sazón de Origen, the house's fictional restaurant.Not your data: your result is built with YOUR restaurant's.See the full example →

Sample result

Sazón de OrigenFictional contemporary Colombian restaurant in Medellín, 2 locations, 6 years in business. Every sample result in the library comes from this same case. Fictional restaurant

The owner asked this: «I have been repeating a 34 % food cost for two years and the bank does not back it up. I have purchases, sales and inventories for both locations.»

The 34 % the house kept repeating was not added up wrong: it was split wrong. It was food and beverage consumption divided by total sales.

Line for the month (2 locations, COP)	Food	Beverage
Opening inventory	18,400,000	6,900,000
+ Purchases in the period	61,000,000	10,200,000
− Closing inventory	17,100,000	6,600,000
= Cost of goods sold	62,300,000	10,500,000
Sales excluding tax	178,000,000	36,000,000
Actual cost of the family	35.0 %	29.2 %

Added together and divided by the 214,000,000 of total sales they give exactly the declared 34.0 %. Split apart, the kitchen sits at 35.0 % and the bar at 29.2 %: two different businesses that had been averaging each other out for two years.

What went in and what stayed out, so next month compares against the same thing: comps (1,240,000) and staff meals (2,100,000) go in, because they come out of the same storeroom, and they are declared separately. Delivery packaging stays out, because it is not food. And it was confirmed with the administrator that the 214,000,000 are reported excluding consumption tax: if the tax were inside, this 35.0 % would be artificially low and the whole reading would be worthless.

The theoretical is built from each dish's current costing card multiplied by its units sold. It is not an opinion: it is what the kitchen should cost if everything came out as written.

Dish	Units for the month	Price	Sales	Card cost	Total cost
House bandeja	1,420	42,000	59,640,000	13,700	19,454,000
Three-meat sancocho	880	46,000	40,480,000	15,900	13,992,000
Garlic trout	610	52,000	31,720,000	17,800	10,858,000
Rest of the menu	—	—	46,160,000	—	12,300,000
Total food			178,000,000		56,604,000

Theoretical food cost 31.8 % · actual 35.0 % · gap 3.2 points.

In this month's money: 5,696,000 COP. The house sets its own threshold at 3 sustained points and this one crossed it, so it gets investigated this week and not next month.

The translator that makes the figure land: 1 point of food cost on food sales is 1,780,000 COP a month. And against the declared goal —lifting operating margin from 8 % to 14 % in 12 months without touching menu prices— those 5,696,000 are worth 2.7 of the 6 points that have to be recovered. Almost half of the year's goal sits inside this single gap.

One honest condition before going hunting: the theoretical is only worth as much as the costing card feeding it. If the cards are light, part of the "leak" is arithmetic and not theft.

SUPUESTO: the food cost target used here is not an industry yardstick, and no single yardstick fits everyone. It is the 31.8 % that Sazón de Origen's own recipes state, and the 35.0 % it is compared against comes from its own inventories. Source: the sales, food cost and goal the house declares in its context card. If the house agreed to move menu prices, or if the goal were different, the target changes and this whole table gets recalculated.

Illustrative example generated with a fictional restaurant. Not a promise of results, not a client case.

This is 2 of 3 parts. Behind the wall are **the three leaks by name**: which one takes the largest share of the 5,696,000, what evidence confirms each, the 15-day test with owner and date, and how to rule out that the gap comes from the costing card rather than from a leak.

See the full example — free account

Works with these AIs

Claude para Excel — the best for this assistant The only one that enters YOUR spreadsheet instead of working on a copy: it reads your tabs, calculates and leaves the result in a new dated tab without overwriting anything. Ask it for the sheet map before it calculates.

How to use it

Gather the month's food sales, the period's purchases and, if you have them, opening and closing inventories.

Paste the assistant into your everyday AI and hand over the numbers as it asks, one at a time.

Read the gap in money, pick the most likely leak and run that verification this week.

Which of your data it uses

of 23

This assistant works with 9 of the 23 fields in «My Restaurant», among them Business type, Cuisine or concept and Active sales channels. It does not ask out of curiosity: these are what make the answer speak about YOUR scale instead of an industry average — the same calculation on a business of another size returns a number you cannot decide with. You fill them once and they apply across the library, so the second assistant you open already starts with them in place. Whatever you leave blank, the assistant asks for one thing at a time instead of inventing it, and says so before answering, so you know what it is working from.

Business typeCuisine or conceptActive sales channelsMenu price rangeAverage check (with currency)Best-selling dishesAverage monthly salesApproximate food cost (%)Main goal this year

Always up to date

Every assistant carries a visible version and date. When an AI changes how it works, the assistant's version goes up and you see what changed.

Same method, another variant

Inside the app this is a single control: you press it and the assistant reframes itself, including the variants that don't appear here because they don't have their own page yet.

What gets audited

food costbeverage cost labour cost prime cost cost and margin per dish AI Costing Spreadsheet Analyzer for Restaurants