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Glossary

Inventory variance (theoretical vs. actual)

Inventory variance
The gap between what you should have used and what you did — the food-cost half of profit leak.

Inventory variance is the gap between the product a restaurant should have used based on what it sold (theoretical usage) and what it actually used — the measure that surfaces waste, over-portioning, and shrink. Waste alone runs an estimated 10–15% of a typical ~32% food-cost base, and the recoverable slice of variance is real money every month. It’s the food-cost half of profit leak, and it becomes far more powerful when correlated with the labor and void signals from the same shifts.

→ Estimate the recoverable slice: leak calculator

Where these figures come from

  • Orbisk — Roughly 10–15% of food spend is lost to waste in professional kitchens. via Orbisk
  • NRA Restaurant Operations Data Abstract (2024) — Food and beverage cost runs about 32% of sales. via BentoBox

Industry benchmarks drift. Where a figure is a range, it is published as a range rather than rounded into false precision.

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