Most restaurant owners know their sales to the riyal, but far fewer know exactly how much each plate costs to make. That gap is where margin disappears — through waste, over-portioning, forgotten stock and price changes that never reach the menu.
1. Build recipes with real ingredient costs
Start by recording every dish as a recipe: the ingredients, the quantity of each, and the current purchase price. When a supplier changes a price, the cost of every affected dish updates, and you can see immediately which items are no longer profitable.
2. Count stock regularly, not just once a quarter
A short weekly count of your most expensive items — proteins, dairy, specialty ingredients — catches problems early. Compare what the system says you should have with what is on the shelf; the difference tells you where to look.
3. Track waste on purpose
Give the team a simple way to log waste with a reason: spoiled, dropped, returned, staff meal. Patterns appear quickly. One item repeatedly spoiling usually means you are ordering too much, or storing it wrongly.
4. Set par levels and order from data
- Define a minimum level for each ingredient so you reorder before you run out.
- Use your sales history to predict busy days instead of guessing.
- Compare supplier prices for the same item and keep the history.
5. Review food cost by dish, every month
Once a month, sort your menu by margin. Promote the dishes that earn well, rework or reprice the ones that do not, and retire items that are slow and expensive to make. This single habit often does more than any discount campaign.
What you measure each week, you can improve each month.
Inventory tracking works best when it is connected to your POS, so every sale automatically reduces stock and the numbers stay honest without extra data entry.
