In 1849, miners in California would sift through tons of dirt to find an ounce of gold. In 2025, restaurant owners are doing the opposite: You are sifting through tons of gold and throwing out the ounces. The "ounces" in your restaurant are the 0.5-ounce over-portions happening on your prep line every single day. The Math of the "Tiny Leak": - Let's say you sell a Signature Ribeye or a Premium Pasta. - If your kitchen over-portions by just half an ounce per plate... - And you serve 80 plates a day... - At an average cost of $1.50 per ounce... - That is $60 a day in "invisible" waste. $60/day = $1,800 a month. That is the cost of your electricity bill, a new piece of equipment, or a family vacation—gone, simply because of a heavy-handed prep cook. The 5-Minute "Profit Plug" Action Plan 🛠️ You don't need to fire your staff. You need to "Calibrate the Culture. 1. The "Blind Scoop" Test: Tomorrow at 4:00 PM, grab a random prep container. Ask your cook to scoop what they think is a "standard portion" onto a scale. 2. The Variance: If they are off by more than 10%, show them the math. Tell them: "This half-ounce is the difference between us being profitable and us struggling. 3. The Visual Aid: Tape a photo of the correct portion size on the scale at eye level.

Most restaurant owners think they lose money during the "Friday Night Rush" because of a kitchen mistake or a comped meal. ​They’re wrong. ​The biggest "Profit Leak" happens on Tuesday at 2:30 PM. It’s the "Ghost Shift"—when you have 3 servers on the floor, but only 2 tables in the dining room. ​In 2025, labor costs are rising by nearly 11% annually. If you are overstaffed by just one person for two hours a day, you are burning roughly $800–$1,200 per month in pure profit. ​Here is your 5-Minute "Profit Plug" Action Plan: 1. ​The 15% Rule: Pull your sales report from the last four Tuesdays. Look at the hour between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM. 2. ​The Calculation: If your labor cost for that specific hour is higher than 15% of the sales generated in that hour, you are officially "bleeding." 3. ​The Fix: Don’t just cut staff—stagger them. Move one person’s start time 60 minutes later. That 60-minute "stagger" saves you ~$15–$20 a day. Over a month, that pays for your electricity bill.

As a restaurant owner, you know your busiest dishes. The burger that flies out of the kitchen on a Friday night, the wings on game day. But here’s the hard truth I learned the hard way: High volume doesn't mean high profit. You could be selling 500 burgers a week, but if your margin on them is razor-thin, you're just churning out work for pennies. Meanwhile, that pasta dish you only sell 20 times a week might be your actual goldmine. How do you fix this? It's called Menu Engineering. It used to take hours of spreadsheets and math. Now, you can do it in 5 minutes with AI. Here is the exact method to find your menu's "hidden gold" and ditch the losers. The 4 Types of Dishes on Every Menu Every single item you sell falls into one of these four boxes: 1. ⭐ Stars: High Profit & High Popularity. (These are your champions. Keep them, highlight them.) 2. 🐴 Plowhorses: Low Profit & High Popularity. (You sell a ton, but make little. Action: Raise the price slightly or lower the food cost.) 3. 🧩 Puzzles: High Profit & Low Popularity. (Great margin, but nobody buys them. Action: Rename it, take a better photo, or move it to a better spot on the menu.) 4. 🐕 Dogs: Low Profit & Low Popularity. (Why is this here? Action: Ditch it to speed up your kitchen.) Your 5-Minute AI Audit You don't need to be a mathematician to figure this out. Let AI do the heavy lifting. Step 1: Grab Your Data Take just one section of your menu (e.g., Appetizers or Mains) from last month's POS report. You just need four numbers for each item: - Item Name - Quantity Sold - Food Cost (rough estimate is fine for now) - Selling Price Step 2: The "Menu Master" Prompt Copy and paste the prompt below into ChatGPT or Claude. Then, paste your data list underneath it. [PASTE THIS PROMPT] Act as a professional Restaurant Menu Engineer. I am going to provide you with a list of menu items from one section of my menu. For each item, I have the Name, Quantity Sold last month, Cost to make, and Selling Price.

Before we start fixing the leaks this week, we need to know where the water level is. Be honest—this is a judgment-free zone. Knowing your number is the first step to changing it. If you don't know your number, select "I have no clue" (and we'll fix that by Wednesday). [Poll Options] - 🟢 Under 28% (Elite Status) - 🟡 28% - 32% (Average/Healthy) - 🟠 33% - 38% (Danger Zone) - 🔴 38%+ (Bleeding Cash) - ❓ I have no clue / My accountant handles it Comment below: What is the ONE item on your menu that is absolutely destroying your food cost right now? (e.g., Wings, Avocado, Steak).