Why Should You Count Key Items Daily?

If you have ever taken a shot at linking your entire POS item listing to recipes, the effort is significant and hopefully the return will match. The typical recipe model will include a lot of educated guesswork. Perhaps 5% subtracted from the perfect yield to allow for normal variance. When guessing the count for a typical box of 16-20 shrimp, most people use the low number - 16. If it's actually 20, that's a 20% difference.

Dry goods may settle and when called in recipes by volume, yields can be less than expected. Some models adjust to the conservative side. People want variances to be caused by actions or activities other than normal yield variation. Most people set standard yields to the low side of normal.

Let's introduce a brazen thief into the formula. Our thief is taking a case of frozen meat to the garbage bin about 20 minutes before closing each night.

In our example, it's a high volume operation and the menu is dominated with ribs. Half racks and full racks are sold with a variety of sides and combo choices. The ideal usage calls for 100 cases of ribs a week. The thief works 4 nights a week.

Would your recipe model catch the 4% variance due to theft?

Portion control helps. A case of 30# baby back ribs will include 24-1.25# racks. Daily counts of prep, preliminary cooking and POS sales will help answer the 4% riddle. You won't have time to do this analysis with each ingredient.
Pick your top 10 to start. It can get addictive when you see the savings. I'd limit this daily activity to 25 items.


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