The short version
If your invoices look normal but your food cost is high, you don’t have a food cost problem. You have a portioning problem. The numbers on paper are fine. What hits the plate is not.
The real math: food cost vs portion cost
When owners say “my food cost is out of control,” what they really mean is:
- Plates are leaving the kitchen heavier than the recipe card says.
- Yield is lower than the spreadsheet assumes.
- Waste and “family meal” are eating margin quietly in the background.
On paper, your burger might look like this:
8 oz patty @ $4.00/lb → $2.00 meat cost per burger Bun + toppings: $0.95 Total portion cost: $2.95 on a $12.99 burger ≈ 22.7% food cost
In real life, the grill cook is scooping 9–10 oz because the press is loose and nobody checks it. Now your “8 oz” burger is actually:
9.5 oz average → $4.00 ÷ 16 × 9.5 ≈ $2.38 meat cost Adjusted portion cost: $3.33 → food cost jumps to ~25.6%
Nothing changed on your vendor order. Your “food cost problem” came from 1.5 oz of meat you never priced into the plate.
Where portioning quietly blows up margin
There are four usual suspects that wreck a good food cost on paper:
1. Scoops, ladles, and hands
- “Heaping” instead of level scoops for fries, rice, mash, and sides.
- Ladles that are “about 4 oz” but actually hold 5.5 oz when full.
- Handful cheese and fries that grow all day as people get busy and lazy.
2. Cook loss and trimming
- Protein that shrinks 30% on the flat top, but your cost card assumes 20%.
- Steaks and fish trimmed on the line instead of a controlled prep station.
- “Bad” portions tossed instead of repurposed into staff meal or specials.
3. Grab-and-go line habits
- Extra sauces, dressings, or sides added “just to make it look nice.”
- Staff comping add-ons to fix mistakes, but you never track it as waste.
- Lunch portions and dinner portions using the same plate and tools.
4. Zero feedback loop
- Nobody weighs a finished plate once a week.
- Prep cooks never see the actual recipe cost numbers.
- Managers only look at month-end food cost %, not daily variance.
Quick 3-day portioning audit
You don’t need a six-week project. You need three days of disciplined checking.
Day 1: Weigh the “finished plate”
- Pick 5–7 high-volume items (burgers, wings, pasta, salads, fries).
- During a live shift, quietly plate 5 orders of each and weigh the full plate.
- Compare to what your Recipe Cost Card says should be on that plate.
If the average plate is 10–20% heavier than spec, that’s your “mystery” food cost.
Day 2: Weigh what goes into the pan
- Weigh raw portions before cooking: patties, chicken, steak, fish, fries.
- Track cook loss percentages using a simple yield test: raw weight – cooked weight ÷ raw weight.
- Update your yield numbers where reality doesn’t match the spreadsheet.
Day 3: Lock in tools and visual cues
- Assign exact scoops, ladles, and scales to each station.
- Label them with the menu item and portion size (“Fries – 4 oz level scoop”).
- Do one short line huddle: “This is how we keep raises and bonuses funded.”
How to tighten portioning without killing speed
The goal is consistency, not turning your kitchen into a lab. A few simple guardrails go a long way:
- One scoop per item. If fries are 4 oz, there is one scoop that means 4 oz. Not three different options.
- Scales where they’re actually used. Line cooks won’t walk across the kitchen to weigh 1 oz of cheese.
- Spot checks, not spot lectures. Managers weigh plates with cooks, not behind their backs.
- Portion charts at eye level. Pictures + portion sizes posted at each station.
When you tie your Recipe Cost Card to real tools, your theoretical food cost finally has a chance to match what’s leaving the pass.
Where the RPS tools plug in
Tight portioning is boring to enforce unless the math is right. That’s where the RPS stack comes in:
- Recipe Cost Card: build the true portion cost per plate so everyone knows exactly how much margin each scoop is worth.
- Yield / Trim / Cook Loss Calculator: lock in real yield numbers instead of guessing and hoping the invoices “even out.”
- Menu Engineering Matrix: once portioning is under control, decide which items to push, fix, or kill based on real contribution margin using the calculators in your RPS Vault.
- Live Menu Engine service: if you want the whole thing built and hosted for you, we wire your recipes, yields, and delivery partners into one live system.
Simple next step for this week
Don’t try to “fix food cost” in one shot. Pick the three items that move the most volume in your restaurant.
- Run a quick yield test on the main protein for each.
- Weigh 5 finished plates of each during service.
- Update your Recipe Cost Card with the real numbers.
If you do nothing else and just tighten those three, your food cost % will tell you the story on its own over the next 2–3 weeks.