The most useful control in any kitchen is embarrassingly simple: what should be left, versus what is left. Define your ingredients and per-portion recipe usage, enter the portions sold, and this planner computes theoretical stock remaining, then takes your actual closing count and shows the variance per ingredient, the number that separates wastage from theft from over-portioning.
Theoretical remaining stock = opening + purchases minus (per-portion usage times portions sold, summed across recipes). Variance = actual counted minus theoretical. Consistent negative variance on one ingredient means over-portioning or leakage on the dishes using it.
| Ingredient | Unit | Opening stock | Purchased today | Actual counted (close) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ingredient | Available | Theoretical usage | Expected remaining | Actual counted | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paneer | 12 kg | 8.55 kg | 3.45 kg | — | count to see |
| Butter | 5 kg | 1.45 kg | 3.55 kg | — | count to see |
| Tomato | 30 kg | 6.5 kg | 23.5 kg | — | count to see |
Negative variance (red) = stock missing beyond what sales explain: over-portioning, wastage or leakage. This is a one-day worksheet; the platform version runs it automatically from your POS sales every night — see the platform.
Within 2-3% of usage is measurement noise, scales, spillage, trim differences. Consistent 5%+ negative on a specific ingredient is a finding: check the portioning tools on its dishes first, then prep wastage, then the back door, in that order of likelihood. Positive variance usually means portions are being shorted, which is a guest problem.
From weighing, once: prep the dish to spec, weigh each ingredient, divide by portions. Recipe cards built from memory run 10-20% off actuals, which destroys the variance signal. One afternoon of weighing your top ten sellers covers most of your usage.
By hand, run it on your five costliest ingredients only, paneer, chicken, butter, oil, prawns cover most kitchens' leakage exposure. The automated version links recipes to POS sales so every ingredient reconciles nightly without data entry, that is the Recipe-to-Inventory module on our platform.
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