How to Do a Restaurant Stock Take and Work Out Actual Food Cost Percentage

To work out your actual food cost percentage, you count and value your inventory at the start and end of a period, add what you bought in between, and compare the cost of the food you actually used against your sales. The formula is:

Actual Food Cost % = (Opening Stock + Purchases − Closing Stock) ÷ Food Sales × 100

That middle part — Opening Stock + Purchases − Closing Stock — is your cost of goods sold (COGS), the real value of food that left your kitchen. Below is exactly how to do the stock take and the maths behind it.

Why "actual" food cost matters more than theoretical

Your theoretical food cost is what your recipes say you should spend. Your actual food cost is what you really spent. The gap between them is where money quietly disappears — over-portioning, waste, spoilage, theft, giveaways and prep errors.

A recipe costing tool tells you the theoretical number. Only a stock take tells you the actual one. Running both and comparing them is how you find the leaks.

Step 1: Pick your period and stick to it

Most kitchens do a full stock take weekly or monthly. Weekly gives you sharper data and catches problems faster; monthly is less work but slower to react.

Whatever you choose, always count at the same time — ideally after close on the same day each week, before the next delivery arrives. Consistency matters more than frequency. If your "week" is sometimes 6 days and sometimes 9, your percentages will be meaningless.

Step 2: Build a stock-take sheet that matches your kitchen

Before you count, you need a structured list. Organise it by storage location so you can walk the room without backtracking:

• Walk-in / chiller
• Freezer
• Dry store
• Bar / back bar (if you count drinks too)

For each item, your sheet should have columns for:

1. Item name (be specific: "Beef mince 80/20" not just "beef")

2. Unit (kg, litre, each, case)

3. Count (the quantity on hand)

4. Unit cost (what you pay per unit)

5. Total value (count × unit cost)

List items in the order they physically appear on the shelf. This single change can halve the time a stock take takes.

Step 3: Count everything — accurately

This is the part people rush, and it's where the numbers break.

• Count, don't guess. Weigh open bags and partial containers. A scale is your best friend.
• Two people work faster than one — one counts, one records.
• Don't move stock during the count. Stop receiving deliveries and prepping while you tally.
• Count partials as decimals. Half a 5kg bag of flour is 2.5kg, not "1 bag."
• Include prepped items at the cost of their ingredients, or use a consistent rule (some kitchens ignore prep to keep it simple — just be consistent every period).

Accuracy here is everything. A sloppy count makes a clean formula produce a useless answer.

Step 4: Value your stock correctly

Multiply each item's count by its current unit cost. Watch the units carefully — this is the most common error.

If you buy ketchup by the case of 12 but count individual bottles, your unit cost must be per bottle, not per case. Divide case prices down to the unit you actually count.

Add up the Total value column. That figure is your stock value for this count — it becomes either your opening or closing stock depending on the period.

Step 5: Pull your purchases for the period

Add up every food invoice and cash purchase between your opening and closing counts. Include:

• Supplier deliveries
• Cash-and-carry runs
• Emergency top-ups from the supermarket

Use the date the goods arrived, not the invoice date, and make sure nothing gets counted twice or missed.

Step 6: Calculate cost of goods sold (COGS)

Now plug your numbers in:

COGS = Opening Stock + Purchases − Closing Stock

Worked example:

• Opening stock: £4,200
• Purchases this period: £9,800
• Closing stock: £4,600

COGS = 4,200 + 9,800 − 4,600 = £9,400

That £9,400 is the actual cost of the food you used to generate this period's sales.

Step 7: Work out actual food cost percentage

Take your food sales for the same period (from your POS — net of VAT/tax, food only) and apply the formula:

Actual Food Cost % = COGS ÷ Food Sales × 100

If your food sales were £29,000:

9,400 ÷ 29,000 × 100 = 32.4%

That's your actual food cost percentage. Most full-service restaurants target somewhere between 28% and 35%, but the right number depends on your concept, menu and pricing.

Step 8: Compare actual vs theoretical and act

Here's where the work pays off. If your recipes say you should be at 29% but your stock take shows 32.4%, you have a 3.4-point gap costing real money.

On £29,000 of sales, that gap is about £986 lost in a single period. Common culprits:

• Over-portioning — staff plating heavier than the spec
• Waste and spoilage — over-prepping, poor rotation
• Yield loss — trimming and cooking shrinkage not built into recipes
• Theft or unrecorded comps
• Pricing errors — selling items below their true cost

Investigate the biggest-value categories first. A 5% swing on your highest-volume protein matters far more than a wobble in your herb order.

Common stock-take mistakes to avoid

• Inconsistent timing between counts
• Mismatched units between counting and costing
• Forgetting purchases made in cash or outside normal suppliers
• Mixing tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive figures — keep everything net
• Doing it once and stopping — the value is in the trend, not a single number

One stock take is a snapshot. A run of them is a control system.

Make it repeatable

The reason most kitchens stop doing stock takes is friction. If it takes three hours and a maths headache, it won't survive a busy week. The fix is a consistent sheet, a fixed routine, and templates that do the multiplication and percentages for you so you only enter counts.

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If you'd rather not build all of this from scratch, PrepSheet offers free food-cost and menu-pricing tools — including a food cost calculator and a recipe costing tool — plus a shop of ready-made Excel templates for stock-takes, catering quotes, drinks margins and more. If that sounds useful, you're welcome to join the waitlist and we'll let you know as new tools land.