Getting started

The first 5 dishes to cost (and why those 5)

By José, Mise en Profit · Do not boil the ocean. Start here.

The single biggest reason operators never cost their menu is that the whole menu is overwhelming. Eighty dishes, hundreds of ingredients, sub-recipes feeding into sub-recipes. You look at the mountain, decide it is a someday project, and someday never comes. So let me take the mountain away. You do not cost 80 dishes. You cost five, and you start this week.

Boiling the ocean is why you quit

Trying to cost everything at once guarantees you stop halfway. It is too big, service gets in the way, and the half-finished spreadsheet becomes another thing you feel guilty about. The operators who actually get this done start small, get a win, and let momentum carry the rest. Five dishes is an afternoon, not a project.

Highest volume first

Which five? The five you sell the most of. Not the most expensive, not the ones you are proudest of. The highest-volume dishes, because they touch the most covers, so a single point of margin recovered there compounds faster than anywhere else on the menu. Fix the dishes you sell all night and you have moved the numbers that actually matter.

In most kitchens a small handful of dishes carries the majority of orders. Cost those five and you have a real, accurate read on most of your revenue, from one afternoon of work. That is the opposite of overwhelming. (Pull your POS sales report to find them, and you will probably also find your best seller is not your best-margin dish.)

Win small, then keep going

Once those five are costed, you will have found something. A portion that is too heavy, a sub-recipe nobody had priced, a best seller running 40 percent. Fix it, feel the win, and cost the next five next week. That is how a "someday" project becomes a costed menu, five dishes at a time.