📊 Food cost
Know the true cost of every plate
Build a recipe once and watch plate cost update itself as ingredient prices move. Costliest dishes and anything over your target rise to the top.
- ✓Plate cost down to the gram, food + packaging included
- ✓Dishes losing margin rise to the top vs your target
- ✓A fix-it list tells you exactly which number is missing
Connects to Invoices and Sourcing
💰 Know your costs, protect your margins
Beyond food cost: what each dish really earns
Load in labor and a share of overhead to see the true net profit of every plate, then model a price change before you make it.
- ✓True net profit per dish, with food, packaging, labor, and a share of overhead all loaded in, not just food cost
- ✓Catch the dishes quietly losing money once every cost is counted
- ✓Import your QuickBooks Profit & Loss and every overhead rate becomes a real expense divided by your real net sales, so the totals tie back to your books
- ✓Model a price change against last month's real Square sales, so you see how much more you could earn instead of guessing
Truffle fries
menu $11.00
House burger
menu $15.00
Loaded nachos
menu $13.00
7 dishes lose money once labor and overhead are counted.
Try a price change
Raise House burger $1.00 → +$860/mo
Break-even: you could lose up to 12% of orders before the increase stops paying off. Modeled against your real Square sales.
Food Cost feeds on two imports: the QuickBooks integration pulls your Profit and Loss so every overhead rate is a real expense divided by your real net sales, and the Square integration imports sales, cash, and inventory automatically so price modeling runs on your real orders.
Cost the plate once, then stop re-costing it
Most food cost work dies the same way. Someone builds a spreadsheet, costs forty dishes over a weekend, and three months later every number in it is wrong because six vendors raised prices and nobody went back through it. Smooth Ops builds the recipe once. When an invoice comes in with a new price on an ingredient, every dish using that ingredient recosts itself. The spreadsheet was never the problem. Keeping it current by hand was.
Packaging counts, and it is usually what is missing
A drink that looks like 22 percent food cost on paper is often closer to 30 once the cup, lid, straw and sleeve are in the recipe. Plate cost here includes packaging alongside ingredients, priced from the same invoices, so a to-go order costs what it actually costs. This matters most for cafes, boba shops and anywhere the container is a real share of the ticket.
The fix-it list, instead of a wrong number
A dish is only costed correctly when every line under it has a price and a unit. Rather than quietly averaging over the gaps, Smooth Ops shows you a fix-it list naming the exact ingredient that is missing a number. It is a shorter list than most owners expect, and working through it once is what turns a rough estimate into a figure you can price a menu against.
Food Cost, answered
How long before my dishes are actually costed?+
It depends on how many dishes you sell, not how complicated they are. Most owners cost their top ten sellers in a first sitting, because those are the ones worth knowing. Ingredient prices come in from invoices as you upload them, so the plate costs get more accurate the more you use it rather than needing to be perfect on day one.
Does it include labor and overhead, or just food?+
Plate cost is food and packaging. If you connect QuickBooks, Smooth Ops pulls your Profit and Loss so overhead can be applied as a real expense divided by your real net sales, which gives you a truer net figure per dish. Labor is a separate question and lives in the Schedule module.
What if I buy the same ingredient from two vendors at different prices?+
Both prices are kept, and Sourcing compares them side by side per ounce, pound or case so you can see which vendor is actually cheaper for that item. Sourcing comes free when you have Food Cost and Invoices.
Can I set a target food cost percentage?+
Yes. Set your target and any dish running above it rises to the top of the list, so you are looking at the handful losing margin rather than scrolling your whole menu.
Try Food Cost free
Start with Food Cost today and add the rest when you're ready.
Start free30 days free, no credit card