6 Ways to Chop Your Food Costs

“Just the first year I used MarginEdge, I saved about 2% of gross. That’s big money, which makes me a big fan of MarginEdge.”

– Greg Casten, Owner of Ivy City Smokehouse and Tony & Joes & Investor in MarginEdge

There are 6 major features within MarginEdge that help you consistently hit lower food costs. Arm your leadership team with tools like price alerts, theoretical usage analysis, recipe modules, budgeting tools, and a daily controllable P&L.

MarginEdge is uniquely able to put powerful, real-time data at your fingertips by:

• Processing your invoices quickly. Our team commits to turning your invoices around in 24-48 hours. Plus, your team get these invoices to us fast because all they need to do is snap a photo of them with our app and hit send. Boom.
• Relating your vendor items to products. We know you aren’t interested in how much you’re spending on avocados from each individual vendor – we show you how much you’re spending on avocados, period.

How we turn this tech into amazing food cost management….

#1 Price Alerts + Price Movers

You could have hundreds of ingredients coming through your restaurant. How do you make sure you’re getting the best deal on each item and are paying what you expected? With Price Alerts, you can configure settings in MarginEdge to trigger an email to you each time an invoice comes in under or over certain thresholds. Then, check out how much the item increased/decreased by percentage, unit impact, or the impact on the product with our Price Movers feature.

“With MarginEdge, I know our food costs right away. For example, recently our vendor of Unagi Eel had an export problem causing the price to go from $250/case to $300/case, so we ordered from someone else.”

– Alex Le, General Manager, Wasabi

#2 Track quantities coming in

Tracking that the right quantities of ingredients come in is just as important as tracking their prices. When you’re shorted on a delivery, or the quality of ingredients isn’t fit to be served, MarginEdge ensures you’re not paying more than you owe. We capture all handwritten notes on invoices and keep a record in our system. Our bill pay feature makes sure you only pay what you actually owe. Don’t rely on vendors to keep track of your credits!

“MarginEdge even keeps track of credits for us, making sure we’re only ever paying vendors what is fairly owed.”

– Alex Le, General Manager, Wasabi

#3 Know your recipes costs as prices shift

MarginEdge has a platform to build your recipes. Have prepped items? We pull those in too. See how much a recipe costs to make with the most recent ingredient prices factored in, or by taking an average of a custom range.

Now your staff has digital records of everything they prepare. The recipes are easily searchable, have clearly labeled quantities, options for photos and videos, ability to scale the recipe up or down – which all help ensure your food is prepared correctly, reducing waste.

“MarginEdge’s dynamic recipe costing allows us to understand what’s happening on the plate and how it affects the bottom line. We budgeted a 25.2% food cost but because of the data and analysis offered by MarginEdge, we hit a 24.2% food cost.”

– Todd Enany, owner and operator of Sunday in Brooklyn

#4 Pinpoint waste with a theoretical usage report

In a perfect world, we’d turnaround and sell everything we buy. With perishable goods and human error, that’s nearly impossible, but MarginEdge can help you close the gap by showing you actionable data to course correct during the period.

Because we know what you’re buying, what you’re selling (even modifiers), and what you have on hand (with our amazing inventory platform) we can tell you what’s missing – anything that’s wasted, over-portioned, or even stolen. You’ll know which items are problems and when it’s happening, so you can go back in the kitchen and make adjustments.

Taking inventory sound gruesome? It’s not with us. You don’t need clipboards or spreadsheets anymore – just put our customizable digital sheet on a tablet or laptop to do your count (even where there’s no wifi!). We’ll automatically update prices for you as invoices come in.

#5 Track budget performances across categories, across locations

MarginEdge can set cost targets as a percentage of your dollar cost or fixed dollar targets. We show you your progress during the period so you know where you stand on budget performance as invoices are processed. If one of your budgets looks off track, click on the spike and see the invoices that came in that day to discover what happened.

If you have multiple locations, we show you how they rank amongst each other on spend, inspiring some healthy competition amongst managers.

In a world that depends on contactless interaction, MarginEdge makes it easy for our eight operating restaurants to share data with our Support Center. The real time data, available to all of MarginEdge users whenever and wherever they need it, has also been vital as it has allowed us to be nimble and make critical decisions when they matter.

– Maggie O’Connor, Metropolitan Hospitality Group

#6 Get a daily controllable P&L

Because we pull in your daily sales information from your POS nightly and upload your invoice
data in 24-48 hours, you can track your controllable P&L throughout the period.

Wouldn’t you rather get on a plane that’s using real-time data to make critical in-flight adjustments, not just landing and hoping to step out at the right location? Probably. Our approach monitors costs throughout the period, not after you close the books. With faster numbers, you can make faster corrections, leading to more control over your food costs.

“I especially like the interim P&L because you can look at things like category spend per month at any time, even mid-month, so you can make on-the-fly adjustments to your purchasing, pricing, or plating.”

– Greg Casten, Owner of Ivy City Smokehouse and Tony & Joes; Investor in MarginEdge

“MarginEdge allowed our team to go from being an accounting department to being more of a finance department. Now, it’s not just about inputting things after the fact; we have the time and tools to analyze.”

-Javier Retamar, CFO, Maple Street Biscuit Company (34 locations)