Food Cost Variance and Price History Analysis

When food cost rises, the first question is always the same: did prices go up, or did we use more? The two need different answers. A price rise is a conversation with a supplier, or a change to the menu price. A usage problem is a conversation in the kitchen. Treating one as the other wastes a month.

Wox keeps both sides visible. Price history shows what you paid for each item over time. Food cost variance compares what your recipes say you should have spent with what you actually spent. This guide explains how to read each one and how to build a short weekly habit around them.

Two kinds of variance

Price variance is the change in what you pay for the same item. Tomatoes at 3.20 ₾ a kilo in June and 5.10 ₾ in December is price variance. It comes from suppliers, seasons and the market.

Food cost variance, often called actual versus theoretical, is the gap between the cost your recipes predict for what you sold and the cost you actually incurred. If recipes say last week's sales should have used 1,840 ₾ of ingredients and you spent 2,050 ₾, the 210 ₾ difference is variance. It comes from waste, over-portioning, unrecorded staff meals and theft.

Prices also move theoretical cost, because recipe costs follow each item's current price. That is why you check prices first. Once prices are current, whatever gap remains belongs to the kitchen. Actual vs theoretical food cost covers the idea in more depth.

Where price history comes from

For most restaurants in Georgia the answer is rs.ge. Once the rs.ge integration is connected, waybills from registered suppliers are imported, and the unit price on each line is recorded against the matching item. Prices are converted to the unit you stock the item in, so a price per case and a price per kilo do not get mixed.

Wox also guards against obvious mistakes. A line priced far outside an item's recent prices, often a unit error on the waybill, is not applied, and a note stays on the import so someone can check it. For suppliers who do not issue electronic waybills, such as a farmer at the Dezerter Bazaar, you can record a price by hand on the item.

Reading an item's price history

Open an item from Inventory and look at its price movement. Each recorded price appears with its date and the change from the previous one, next to a chart of the trend. One rise is information. Three rises in two months is a pattern worth a phone call.

1. 1List your ten to fifteen highest-spend items. For most kitchens that means meat, cheese, oil, dairy and a few seasonal vegetables.
2. 2Open each item in Inventory and review its price movement over the last one to three months.
3. 3Note every item whose latest price sits clearly above its recent level.
4. 4For those items, ask Wox Analyst to compare prices across the suppliers you buy from. If every supplier moved, it is the market. If one did, it is the supplier.
5. 5Bring supplier-specific increases to the person who manages that supplier before the next order.
6. 6Record the price you agreed, and review menu prices or recipes where the margin no longer holds.

Reading the food cost variance report

The Food Cost Variance report in Reports puts theoretical cost, actual cost and the gap between them side by side for the period you choose, with detail per item. Theoretical cost is recipe cost multiplied by units sold. Actual cost is what was spent or used. A positive variance means you spent more than your recipes account for.

The report needs two things to be useful: POS sales and recipes with costs on your menu items. Dishes without recipes add nothing to theoretical cost, so a menu with half its dishes uncosted will always look worse than it is. Food Cost Variance is one of the advanced reports included from the Growth plan.

wox.ge

Wox

Analytics

March 2026 · Downtown

Week

Month

Quarter

Food Cost

28.4%

↓ 1.6% vs target

COGS

$18.4k

↓ $1.2k MoM

Waste

$312

Stockouts

3

Weekly SpendLast 7 weeks

W1

W2

W3

W4

W5

W6

W7

Top Spend Category

Proteins

38% of total spend

Price Variance

+2.1%

vs last month average

1. 1Open Reports and choose Food Cost Variance.
2. 2Set the period to last week, and choose the location if you run more than one.
3. 3Read the variance percentage first, then look at the items with the largest gap.
4. 4For the top items, check waste entries and portioning before assuming a price problem.
5. 5Compare with the previous four weeks to see whether the gap is new or has been there all along.

Let the daily insight watch for spikes

Wox Analyst checks food cost every day. When the last seven days run more than five points above the previous thirty-day average, it raises a food cost insight that names the biggest cost line, so a spike shows up within a week instead of at month end.

You can also ask it directly: which supplier prices went up this month, who is cheapest for sunflower oil, which dishes lost margin after the last price change. If a dish's margin has slipped, it can propose new menu prices to restore it. Nothing changes until you confirm. Wox Analyst is included on paid plans, not on Free.

Bring prices up to date first. Whatever variance is left belongs to the kitchen.

A fifteen-minute weekly routine

1. 1On Monday morning, open the Food Cost Variance report for the previous week.
2. 2If variance went up, check the price movement of the three items driving most of it.
3. 3Read any food cost insight from Wox Analyst and the items it names.
4. 4Raise supplier-specific increases with the supplier before the next order goes out.
5. 5Write down what you agreed or changed, so next week's review starts from a known baseline.

Common mistakes

• Reviewing only at month end. By then a price rise has been paid on four deliveries. Weekly is enough.
• Reading averages. A flat category average can hide one item up 30 percent and another one down. Look at individual items.
• Blaming the supplier for every rise. Check other suppliers first; seasonal produce moves for everyone.
• Never following up. Variance data is most useful in a conversation with the supplier before the next order, not in a spreadsheet after it.

For the causes behind a stubborn gap, food cost variance causes goes through the usual suspects, and negotiating supplier prices covers the conversation that comes after.