Daily Operations
What Is It?
Daily Operations is the most important tool for running your kitchen day to day.
It lets you:
- Track what you sell
- Understand what you actually consume
- Detect losses and over-portioning
- Control your food cost
- Prepare tomorrow's supplier orders
In One Sentence
Every day, you compare:
- What you should have used (based on recipes)
- What you actually used (based on your stock)
The difference = loss or problem.
Every day follows the same cycle:
- Record sales and deliveries
- Check actual stock
- Analyze variances
- Close the day
- Prepare tomorrow's orders
The Daily Report
Each day has one report with a lifecycle:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | Actively being edited. You can add sales, log supplies, update stock counts, and save notes. |
| Closed | Frozen. Stock has been deducted based on sales. Estimated supplies become available. |
| Reviewed | Final sign-off by a manager (optional). |
Navigate to Kitchen > Daily Operations to open or view today's report. The system creates one automatically if it doesn't exist yet.
Sales Tracking
The report tracks what was sold during the day. You have two options:
Pull from POS
Click Pull from POS to automatically import all paid orders from your ordering system. The system aggregates quantities by menu item and marks them as POS-sourced.
Manual Sales Entry
Click Add Sales to manually enter what was sold. Search by category, select menu items, and input quantities. Useful when not all sales go through the POS (cash sales, external platforms, etc.).
You can use both sources together. The report's sales_source will show as "mixed" when combining POS and manual entries.
Supplies Received
Log deliveries as they arrive throughout the day.
Click Add Supply to record what a supplier delivered. Select ingredients, enter quantities, and save. Each entry creates an auditable stock transaction that increases your inventory.
The Supplies Received section shows all deliveries logged for the day. You can delete an entry if it was recorded incorrectly — the stock adjustment is automatically reversed.
Stock Count & Variance
This is where you identify where you're losing money.
The system compares:
- Expected (from your recipes)
- Actual (from your stock)
How It Works
The system calculates automatically:
- Expected usage — based on sales and recipes
- Actual usage — based on your stock (opening + received - closing - waste)
You don't need to calculate anything.
Variance = actual - expected
- Positive = you used too much
- Negative = inconsistency or missing data
How to Read It Quickly
| Variance | Meaning |
|---|---|
| < 5% | Normal. Recipes match reality. |
| 5-15% | Needs attention. Could be portioning issues or unrecorded waste. |
| > 15% | Problem. Investigate immediately: theft, spoilage, incorrect recipes, or counting errors. |
A Concrete Example
Cod: +300g (17%). You used too much product today — likely over-portioning or kitchen waste.
Recording Closing Stock
Before closing the day, do a physical count of your ingredients. Enter the quantities in the Closing Stock column. You can update these multiple times while the report is still open.
Ingredient Breakdown
Click on any ingredient to see a detailed breakdown: which menu items consumed it, how much each used (based on recipes), and the total theoretical usage. This helps pinpoint where the variance is coming from.
Food Cost Analytics
Food cost measures how much you spend on ingredients to generate your revenue. The goal: maximize your margin.
The report calculates key metrics in real-time:
| KPI | Formula | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Food Cost % | (actual cost / revenue) x 100 | < 30% (warns if > 35%) |
| Revenue | Total sales from paid orders | — |
| Variance | Cost of over/under-usage | As close to 0 as possible |
| Waste | Cost of recorded spoilage/damage | Minimize |
These metrics update as you add sales and adjust stock counts throughout the day.
Use the Show inc. VAT checkbox on the ingredients table header to switch between HT and TTC cost views. All unit costs, line costs, and totals adjust accordingly. For accurate food cost %, the system normalizes both costs and revenue to the same VAT basis.
Importing Recipes
Click the Import Recipe button (sparkle icon) on the food cost page or on any recipe detail page. You can paste recipe text or upload a photo/PDF. The AI extracts ingredients and matches them to your stock items in a full-screen split view. For full details, see AI Recipe Import in Stock Management.
Important: A high food cost can come from high purchase prices, significant losses, or over-generous portions. Look at variance data to understand which one.
Retrospective
Before closing the day, you can optionally fill in three reflection fields:
- What went well — things to keep doing
- What went wrong — issues to address
- What to improve — action items for tomorrow
These are saved with the report and help build a history of operational patterns over time. Click Save Draft to preserve your notes without closing the day.
Closing the Day
This is the most important step of your day.
When you click Close Day, several things happen:
-
Stock is automatically deducted based on the day's sales. The system looks up each sold menu item's recipe, calculates ingredient quantities needed, converts units if necessary, and reduces your stock levels. Every deduction is recorded as an immutable stock transaction linked to this report.
-
The report is frozen — no more edits to sales, stock counts, or items.
-
Estimated Supplies section becomes available (see below).
Closing is idempotent and safe to trigger multiple times — stock is only deducted once.
Important: An unclosed day = incomplete data. Make closing the day a non-negotiable daily ritual.
Estimated Supplies
After closing the day, the system automatically suggests what you need to order. The goal: never run out of stock, without over-ordering.
Generating Tomorrow's Order
Click one of three buttons to choose your data source:
- From POS — uses real order history
- From Manual Sales — uses manually entered sales data
- Both — combines POS and manual entries
The system then:
- Predicts tomorrow's sales by averaging the same weekday over the last 6 weeks. If tomorrow is Thursday, it averages all your recent Thursdays.
- Converts dishes to ingredients using your recipes.
- Checks current stock levels and only includes items where you don't have enough.
- Groups items by supplier and creates one draft purchase order per supplier.
Example: The system predicts you'll sell 20 Fish Burgers and 15 Ceviches tomorrow. Your recipes say that needs 4.5kg of cod total. You currently have 1kg in stock. The system generates an order for 3.5kg of cod from your fish supplier.
Reviewing and Sending Orders
Each supplier order appears as a card with a table of ingredients, quantities, and units. You can:
- Review the suggested quantities and adjust if needed
- Send by email — enter the supplier's email and the order is sent as a formatted email. Status changes from "Draft" to "Sent".
- Regenerate to recalculate (e.g., after updating stock levels)
Understanding the Prediction
The prediction uses a simple average: total sales of each item on the same weekday, divided by the number of weeks analyzed (up to 6).
This works well for restaurants with consistent patterns. It does not account for holidays, weather, seasonal trends, or promotions. Use the prediction as a starting point and adjust manually when you know something unusual is coming.
The Full Daily Workflow
| Time | Action |
|---|---|
| Morning | Open today's report (auto-created) |
| Log supplies received from morning deliveries | |
| Throughout the day | Add deliveries as they arrive |
| Pull POS sales or enter manual sales as needed | |
| End of day | Do a physical stock count, enter closing quantities |
| Fill in the retrospective (optional) | |
| Click Close Day | |
| After closing | Generate estimated supplies for tomorrow |
| Review quantities per supplier | |
| Send orders by email | |
| Next morning | Repeat for the new day |
Prerequisites
For Daily Operations to work at its best:
-
Recipes linked to stock items — each menu item should have ingredients defined in Kitchen > Recipes. Without recipes, the system can't calculate theoretical usage or predict supply needs.
-
Up-to-date stock levels — keep quantities accurate so variance calculations and supply forecasts are reliable.
-
Suppliers assigned to stock items (optional but recommended) — in Kitchen > Stock, assign a supplier to each ingredient. This groups purchase orders by supplier.
-
Sales history (for estimated supplies) — at least 1-2 weeks of data for the same weekday. More history means better predictions.
Common Mistakes
- Not defining recipes — no reliable calculations are possible
- Not doing a physical count — variances become meaningless
- Closing without verifying — errors accumulate day after day
- Not recording waste — food cost data becomes inaccurate
One bad input = all your analytics become wrong.
Tips
Tip: Close your day and generate orders at the same time every evening. This creates a routine your team can rely on.
Tip: If variance is consistently high for an ingredient, check the recipe first in Kitchen > Recipes. A wrong quantity per serving will throw off all calculations.
Tip: Log deliveries as soon as they arrive, not at end of day. This keeps your stock levels accurate throughout the day and helps with real-time food cost tracking.
Tip: Use the retrospective consistently. Patterns become visible after a few weeks — recurring issues will stand out.
Related
- Stock Management — manage your ingredient inventory