Food Cost & Margin Analysis
To stop "bleeding" money, you must understand the gap between your costs and your prices.
1. Ingredient-to-Menu Mapping
The system calculates food costs by combining:
**The Recipe**: How much of each ingredient goes into a dish.
**Supplier Prices**: The latest price you paid for that ingredient (extracted from your uploaded invoices).
2. The Margin Report
Navigate to Admin > Reports > Food Cost.
**Ideal Margin**: What your margin *should* be if every gram of food was sold.
**Actual Margin**: What your margin *is* after factoring in wastage, re-fires, and comps.
**The Profit Gap**: If your Ideal Margin is 75% but your Actual is 65%, you have a 10% leakage in your kitchen operations.
3. Identifying "Stars" and "Dogs"
The Category Mix widget helps you classify your menu:
**Stars**: High popularity, high margin. (Promote these!)
**Dogs**: Low popularity, low margin. (Remove these or change the recipe.)
**Workhorses**: High popularity, low margin. (Consider a small price increase.)
**Puzzles**: Low popularity, high margin. (Needs better placement on the menu.)