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For restaurants

The back office a chain would give you.

Independent kitchens run on the same three numbers the groups do, prime cost, plate margin and cash. The difference has never been the maths. It has been who could afford somebody to do it.

60%
prime cost ceiling for a healthy full-service kitchen
28–35%
the food cost band most menus should sit inside
4
classes every plate falls into, on your own sales mix
13
weeks of cash visibility, updated as you trade

Prime cost

Food plus labour, watched weekly.

Prime cost is the single most-watched number in the industry: cost of goods plus labour, as a share of sales. Above 60% in a full-service kitchen and the business is usually working for its suppliers and its rota.

Prime cost for the demo restaurant Food cost is 26% of sales and labour 23%, giving a prime cost of 49%, eleven points below the 60% ceiling. Share of every dollar taken Food 26% Labour 23% Everything else, and profit 51% 60% ceiling Prime cost: 49% Eleven points of headroom. Every point recovered here is close to pure profit.
HDHICT reads food and labour straight from your expense categories, so this updates as you record the week.

Recipe costing

Every plate, to the gram.

Enter ingredients once with their unit costs, then build each dish from them. Change the price of chicken and every dish containing chicken re-costs itself.

  • True plate cost, food-cost percentage and cash margin per dish
  • The price that would hit your target food cost, calculated for you
  • Par levels with low-stock warnings before you run out mid-service
  • Monthly profit per item, so you know what actually pays the rent
The menu engineering table listing each dish with class, price, plate cost, food cost percentage, margin, units sold per month and monthly profit.

Menu engineering

Four quadrants, four different jobs.

Plotted on your own sales mix, not an industry benchmark. The demo menu below has a coffee that outsells everything and earns the least of anything on the list.

Menu engineering matrix for the demo restaurant Eight menu items plotted by share of covers sold against profit per plate. Classic Cheeseburger and Chicken Burrito are Stars. Fettuccine Alfredo, Grilled Salmon Plate and Salmon Caesar are Puzzles. Loaded Fries and Drip Coffee are Plowhorses. House Salad is a Dog. 0% 8.75% 28% $0 $8.60 $19 Share of covers sold Profit per plate Puzzles Stars Dogs Plowhorses Classic Cheeseburger Chicken Burrito Fettuccine Alfredo Loaded Fries Grilled Salmon Plate Drip Coffee House Salad Salmon Caesar
Every plate on one chart. Anything right of the dashed line sells more than its fair share; anything above it earns more than the menu’s average $8.60 a plate. Drip Coffee is the busiest thing in the shop and the least profitable. That is a pricing decision, not a popularity problem.

A week in the kitchen, with HDHICT open.

Monday

Enter last week

Takings and invoices in, either typed or imported as a CSV. Ten minutes.

Tuesday

Read what needs attention

The dashboard ranks it: an overdue invoice, a food-cost creep, a slipping regular.

Before ordering

Check the plates that moved

A supplier price rise reclassifies a Star as a Plowhorse before it eats a month of margin.

Before a decision

Run the scenario

New hire, price rise, extra opening day, see the monthly profit answer before committing.

Month end

Look thirteen weeks out

A quiet January shows up in November, when you can still do something about it.

The demo is a restaurant. Go and poke at it.

The demo kitchen is open to anyone: five months of trading, a real menu costed to the ingredient, and a couple of problems deliberately buried in it.

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