Who is this assistant for?

Your menu has been printed for months and you suspect some dish stopped paying, but you could not name it. You stare at each dish's percentage and still cannot tell which of the three to fix first. The same plate goes out to the dining room and to delivery and you cost it identically for both. You costed two dishes, the month got away from you and now you cannot tell which cards are current.

Most owners carry a dish cost somebody worked out once and nobody touched again, while the supplier moved prices three times. This assistant re-costs the portion with this week's invoices, stamps an expiry date on the number and says, dish by dish, which one still pays for the price already printed and which one does not.

AI assistant · N5 Complete system

◆ Included in the annual plan👨‍🍳 Standard Recipes, Spec Sheets and Productionv1.0.0 · 2026-08-26

📊 Works best with an AI that reads Excel or Sheets (Claude for Excel, ChatGPT, Copilot in Microsoft 365) · optional

Recipe Costing Builder for Restaurants

Loads today's purchase prices onto the recipe you already have and returns each dish's cost per portion with a verdict against the printed menu price, ranked by money and not by percentage.

Depth

9/23

Your data

Compatible AIs

Steps to use it

Depth of the resulttap a level to see what you get

◀ Put out today's fireRun the year ▶

🏛️

N5Complete system

Several chained pieces you install and operate over time, with their review cadence. It changes how the business runs, not one decision.

◆ This assistant 110 of the 164 published assistants are at this level

Is this for you?

What it does and what you get

Most owners carry a dish cost somebody worked out once and nobody touched again, while the supplier moved prices three times.
This assistant re-costs the portion with this week's invoices, stamps an expiry date on the number and says, dish by dish, which one still pays for the price already printed and which one does not.

What you end up with

A costing card per dish with price and date per item, the portion cost split into product, invisibles and packaging by channel, the verdict matrix ranked by margin in money, the re-costing template with an owner, and the month-end checklist.

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: «The menu has been printed since February and I buy meat three times a week. I want to know which of my three mains stopped paying, with numbers I can show the chef.»

The portion that leaves the pass was costed, not the one the menu describes. Every price carries the day of its last August invoice in Medellín, and it is per NET unit: it already has the measured yield factor applied. Without that step the table would charge trimmed weight at purchase-weight prices and the costing would come out low.

Item	Unit	Net quantity	Unit price	Price date	Cost in the portion
Beef posta	kg	140 g	26,000 COP/kg	Aug 12	3,640
Chicharrón	kg	60 g	32,000 COP/kg	Aug 12	1,920
Chorizo	unit	1 of 55 g	1,100 COP/u	Aug 10	1,100
Cooked cargamanto beans	kg	180 g	11,200 COP/kg	Aug 08	2,020
Avocado	kg	70 g	14,000 COP/kg	Aug 12	980
Arepa	unit	1	950 COP/u	Aug 05	950
Egg	unit	1	800 COP/u	Aug 12	800
White rice	kg	120 g	4,600 COP/kg	Aug 05	550
Hogao (sub-recipe)	kg	40 g	12,500 COP/kg	Aug 08	500
Ripe plantain	kg	90 g	4,200 COP/kg	Aug 08	380

Portion close-out	Dining room	Delivery
Product	12,840	12,840
Invisibles (oil, salt, seasoning)	460	460
Channel packaging	0	1,250
Total portion cost	13,300	14,550
Against the 42,000 COP menu price	31.7 %	34.6 %

The same plate clears the house costing rule at the table and breaks it on delivery by 2.6 points. Illustrative figures for this case.

The old card said 16,000 COP for the sancocho; the August purchase says 16,400. Nobody had looked at it in 6 months.

Dish	Menu price	Portion cost	Percentage	Margin in money	Units that month	Margin for the month	Verdict
House bandeja	42,000	13,300	31.7 %	28,700	1,420	40,754,000	Passes · watch on delivery
Three-meat sancocho	46,000	16,400	35.7 %	29,600	880	26,048,000	Fix
Garlic trout	52,000	18,900	36.3 %	33,100	610	20,191,000	Fix

Ranked by percentage, the trout looks worst. Ranked by the month's money, the one to touch first is the sancocho: 26,048,000 COP of margin against 20,191,000, and every point recovered there is worth more. The proposed fix is not a price rise: it is a review of the three meats' portion weights, which together account for 9,100 COP of the 16,400.

And an honest concession: the trout is a fished product and its price moved three times in the quarter. That cost is declared as a band, not a number, and it is reviewed every 30 days.

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 sits the part that turns costing into a habit: the re-costing template with an owner per item family and its review date, the one-page closing checklist, and the indicator you look at on the first Monday of every month —how many dishes on the menu carry a costing older than 30 days. Without it you costed once; with it the number stops ageing in silence.

See the full example — free account

Works with these AIs

Claude — the best for this assistant The best one here: it holds the costing card with all six columns and a date on every price without collapsing them, and it does not fold when the uncomfortable conclusion is that the best seller is the one to touch. Ask for margin in money before the percentage.

How to use it

Fill in My Restaurant: concept, cuisine, city, star dishes, price range and target food cost, so the costing speaks about your house and not a generic restaurant.

Have the last 30 days of purchase invoices at hand, plus the recipe for your fastest-turning dishes with quantities and units.

Paste the assistant into your everyday AI and answer its questions one at a time, without running ahead.

Read the verdict matrix top to bottom: it is ranked by the month's margin in money, not by percentage.

Stamp a 30-day re-costing date on every card and book the review for the first Monday of next month.

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 City and country. 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 conceptCity and countryBest-selling dishesMenu price rangeAverage check (with currency)Active sales channelsApproximate food cost (%)Main goal this year