The Real Problem with Food Costs

Food costs in a restaurant are managed by accurately tracking ingredient prices, portion sizes and yield within each recipe. Without a recipe at the very least, costs quickly become outdated, margins are guessed, and decisions are based on poor or inconsistent data.

Even with recipes, most kitchens are still working from a moment in time. If recipes aren’t regularly updated for weights, yields, costs and allergens, they lose accuracy very quickly.

What’s actually happening in most kitchens

Most kitchens still:

• Update ingredient prices manually
• Recalculate margins dish by dish
• Rely on spreadsheets that go out of date

Every price change creates a ripple effect — but nothing updates automatically.

What actually works

To manage food costs properly, you need:

• Recipes as the single source of truth
• Live ingredient pricing
• Automatic margin calculation
• Visibility across every dish and every team member

Where kitchens lose margin

Margins aren’t just lost on pricing.

They’re lost through:

• Time spent updating spreadsheets
• Re-entering the same data across disconnected systems
• Incorrect or outdated supplier pricing
• Inconsistent portion control

How Prepsheets solves this

Prepsheets connects recipes to the systems your kitchen already uses, with an integrated supplier ingredient intelligence layer.

That means:

• Update a price once → every recipe updates
• Change an ingredient → costs, margins, allergens, nutrition and portions update automatically
• Every dish has live, accurate costing
• Margins are always visible
• Menu data (costs, allergens, etc.) can be pushed directly to your EPOS
• Supplier orders are generated automatically based on stock levels and production plans

No re-entry. No guesswork. No manual duplication.

Bottom line

If your recipes aren’t a living system, you’re losing money.