A working checklist for kitchen and F&B leaders — set the right targets, close the leaks, and keep your food cost percentage where it belongs.
Food cost is the single easiest number to lose control of in any kitchen — a few centimetres of over-portioning, a bit of unlogged waste, and a supplier invoice nobody double-checked can quietly erode your margin every single day. None of the fixes below are complicated. What matters is doing all of them, consistently, as daily habits rather than one-off audits.
Industry standard runs 25–35% of sales, depending on your concept and market. Set your target, then track actual vs. ideal food cost regularly — weekly at minimum, daily if volume allows. A target you never measure against is just a number on a wall.
Measuring spoons, scales, and portion cups aren't optional extras — they're the difference between a recipe cost and what actually leaves the kitchen. Pre-portion high-cost items during prep, before service pressure makes "eyeballing it" the default.
Train staff on proper cutting and prep technique — poor knife skills alone can add several percentage points to your cost. Track and analyse waste sheets systematically, and look for secondary uses for trim (bones for stock, offcuts for staff meals) instead of writing them off.
Analyse which items are high-profit vs. low-profit. Promote or upsell your high-margin dishes through placement, staff recommendations, and menu design. Remove or re-engineer chronically low-performing items rather than letting them quietly drag down your average.
Install CCTV covering storage and prep areas. Restrict storeroom and walk-in access to trusted, named staff only, and keep high-value items (seafood, premium cuts, alcohol) under lock and key with a sign-in/sign-out log.
Use your POS system to track sales, ingredient usage, and wastage side by side — not as separate reports reviewed weeks later. Adjust purchasing and prep quantities based on what the trends actually show, not what you assume they show.
Your purchasing data is leverage — use it. Review supplier pricing quarterly, compare against at least one alternative vendor, and don't let loyalty substitute for a periodic market check. Small percentage gains on high-volume items compound fast.
Educate every team member on the cost impact of their stations — most waste isn't malicious, it's uninformed. Encourage a zero-waste mindset as a cultural default, and reward staff who consistently hit cost targets rather than only flagging the ones who miss them.
None of these fixes work in isolation. A kitchen with perfect portion control but no waste tracking still leaks money. A team well-trained on cost but with no POS visibility is flying blind. Food cost control isn't a single tactic — it's a system of small, boring, daily disciplines that compound over a month, a quarter, a year.