7 Signals Your Operation Is Bleeding Margin

Check every statement that is true of your operation right now. Be honest, the score is only useful if the answers are.

The Signals

01You find out about price changes from your invoice.If the vendor tells you after the delivery, you are absorbing the increase instead of pricing against it.
02Your inventory count is a guess.Counts that are estimated, skipped, or done by a different person each week cannot produce a usable food cost number.
03Labor gets cut after the week is over.Reacting to a finished payroll instead of adjusting the schedule mid-week means the overage is already spent.
04Your managers cannot name their top three cost drivers.If the people running the shifts do not know where the money goes, no one is protecting it on the floor.
05Comps, voids, and waste go unreviewed.Untracked give-aways are the quietest margin leak in the building because nothing in the P&L labels them.
06Your menu has not been re-costed in ninety days.Plate costs move with the market. A menu priced against last quarter's costs is priced against a market that no longer exists.
07You review your numbers monthly, not weekly.A monthly close tells you what happened. A weekly review is the only cadence that lets you still do something about it.

Scoring Key

0 to 1 checked

Tight operation.Your controls are working. Keep the cadence and protect it when the room gets busy.

2 to 3 checked

Margin is leaking.Nothing here is fatal on its own, but together they are quietly costing you points of profit every period.

4 or more checked

You are flying blind.The numbers are arriving too late to act on. This is an infrastructure problem, not an effort problem.

Next Step

If something on this list sounds like what's happening in your operation, the first conversation is free. Thirty minutes, no pitch.