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Just as you pay rent, utilities, etc. on the same date each month, you should calculate your food cost based on a regular time period. You should analyze your inventory at the same time every week perhaps every Sunday, either before or after the kitchen opens. Always take inventory outside of business hours, so no food is being delivered or being cooked. " On the day that begins your "fiscal week" Sunday, in our case do a thorough inspection of all the food products in your kitchen. It's important that you're as accurate as possible, so look at your receipts to see how much you paid for each food item. For example, you may have paid $48 for 35 lbs. of frying oil, of which 5 lbs. are left at the beginning of the fiscal week. Calculate exactly how much that 5 lbs. of oil is worth at the opening of your inventory period: ($48 35 lbs.) = (X 5 lbs.) When you solve for X, you see that you have about $6.86 worth of frying oil at the beginning of the fiscal week. Repeat this calculation procedure for every food item you have. Add up all the sums to determine your opening inventory the dollar amount for the food in your kitchen at the beginning of the fiscal week. Throughout the week, you will order more food supplies as necessary, based on what's selling best on your menu. Keep all purchase receipts neatly organized in your office so you know exactly how much you spent on food purchases during the day. Repeat the process outlined in Step 2. This will give you a number that serves two functions: it is the opening inventory for the next week and the "ending inventory" for the current week. You now know how much food you started the week with, how much you bought, and how much you ended with. At the end of each shift, the restaurant manager should calculate total sales. Look at your sales reports for each day of the week and add them up to calculate your weekly food sales. In Part 1 of this article, you calculated your maximum allowable food cost as a percentage of your total budget. Now, you need to calculate what percentage of your budget is actually being spent on food. When you compare those two percentages to each other, you can see whether you're spending too much money on food to keep your business afloat. To calculate actual food cost, complete the following equation: Food Cost% = (Beginning Inventory + Purchases Ending Inventory) Food Sales. For our example, let's say Beginning Inventory = $10,000; Purchases = $2,000; Ending Inventory = $10,500; Food Sales = $5,000 (10,000 + 2,000 10,500) 5,000 = 0.30 = 30% In the example, there is a maximum allowable food cast of 25%, and an actual food cost of 30%. This indicates that the person is spending too much money on food cost to reach a target profit of 5%. Adjust your purchasing every week to keep your inventory in check. You want to bring down your actual food cost to a percentage at or below your maximum allowable food cost. Keep in mind that this calculation can go wrong if you counted items incorrectly during inventory, counted and input units differently than the inventory pricing (such as by counting 10 cans of tomatoes, but being charged by the case for that item), are missing the invoice for a product you counted in the inventory, or having an invoice processed for a product that you do not have (such as a returned item).
Choose a date that will begin each weekly assessment period for you. Determine your "opening inventory. Track your purchases. Take inventory again at the beginning of your next fiscal week. Find out how much you made in food sales during the week. Calculate your actual food cost for the week. Compare your maximum allowable and actual food costs.