Making and maintaining a master costing spreadsheet is probably one of the most important tasks of a restaurant owner. Yup, you got it! If you’ve been feeling lazy lately and have been putting this off, you need to wake up, my friend. This needs to be updated everyday. After all, the restaurant business doesn’t really take off properly until it has been a few months.
Initially, you’ll have to run at a loss, so if you’re just starting out, having the right tools will make your job a whole lot easier and trust me, a master costing spreadsheet is definitely a tool you want to be using!
How It Works
So what really is this master costing spreadsheet? Well, this lists all the items in the menu and the profit you make from them, in simple layman terms. It sounds quite easy to maintain it, but seasoned restaurateurs will know exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s a hellishly difficult task. Moreover, how much of math can you take in a day? You’re a restaurant owner, not an accountant! Well, sometimes, it really is hard to distinguish between these two professions!
Menu Engineering
A lot of menu engineering also comes into the picture when you’re working on your master costing spreadsheet. Have no clue about what I’m talking about, do you? Menu engineering is an important part of the restaurant business. In fact, all of us have had some experience with it at some point or the other; only, we have not put a name to it!
Menu engineering is basically a branch of study where you gauge the popularity of the various items on your menu card and predict the sales of these items.
As you can already guess, prediction of future profit is very important in the restaurant business and determining the number of plates of a particular item which you can sell on a particular day is a very important part of the master costing spreadsheet!
What it Entails
So what do we include in our master costing spreadsheet? First off, the names of all the items on the menu should be included. The next thing to include will be the cost required to prepare each item. Follow this up with the cost you sell each item at and the quantity of each item sold on a particular day.
Next, you need to put in the percentage profit you make on every item. Total it up to get your net profit. A master costing spreadsheet is pretty complicated business, so don’t pass up the opportunity of getting a free master costing spreadsheet from my website, it’s going to help you a whole lot!
