Food Cost Reporting and Restaurant Analytics

Restaurants rarely lack numbers. The POS prints a Z report every night, suppliers send waybills, and someone keeps a spreadsheet of costs. What is usually missing is a habit: the same questions, asked at the same time, against the same scope, by people who are expected to act on the answers.

This guide covers the three numbers that matter most for food cost, where to find them in Wox, and a review routine you can run every week in under an hour.

How to calculate food cost percentage

Food cost percentage is the cost of the ingredients you used divided by the food sales they produced, multiplied by 100. The cost of what you used is your cost of goods sold, or COGS, and it is worked out from stock rather than from purchases.

• COGS = opening inventory + purchases received in the period − closing inventory.
• Food cost percentage = COGS ÷ food sales × 100.

A worked example: a restaurant in Vake opens the month with 9,800 ₾ of food stock, receives 15,600 ₾ of deliveries and closes with 11,200 ₾ on the shelves. COGS is 14,200 ₾. If food sales for the month were 46,000 ₾, food cost is 30.9 percent. The number is only as good as the two counts on either side of it, which is why inventory counting comes first.

What counts as a healthy percentage depends on the concept. A khachapuri bakery, a steakhouse and a wine bar will sit in very different ranges. Our article on restaurant food cost percentage walks through typical ranges and what pushes them.

Actual versus theoretical food cost

Actual food cost is what the counts and deliveries say you spent. Theoretical food cost is what you should have spent, given what you sold and what each recipe costs. If the kitchen sold 300 portions of chakapuli and each portion costs 7.40 ₾ to make by its recipe card, the theoretical cost of those sales is 2,220 ₾.

The gap between the two is the most useful number in the kitchen. A positive gap means you used more than the recipes allow: waste that was never recorded, generous portioning, a pour that runs heavy, stock that left without being sold, or a delivery entered at the wrong price. The theoretical side depends on accurate recipes, so start with recipe costing if yours are out of date.

The gap between actual and theoretical cost is where a kitchen's habits show up in money.

Where the numbers live in Wox

Reports in Wox are grouped by the question they answer: Sales, Menu, Costs, Labor and Operations. The Costs section holds the reports a food cost review needs, including COGS, Food Cost Variance, Waste, Stockouts, Prime Cost and profit and loss. You can search the report list by name if you do not know where something is filed.

• COGS sets the cost of goods sold against revenue and shows the margin left over.
• Food Cost Variance compares recipe cost with what was actually spent, which is the actual versus theoretical view.
• Waste shows stock written off, by item and by reason.
• Stockouts lists items that ran out, for how long, and the sales that were likely missed.
• Prime Cost adds labour to COGS and shows both as a share of net sales.

COGS, Waste, the daily summary, transactions, item sales and the tax summary are available on every plan. Deeper analysis such as Food Cost Variance, Prime Cost, Stockouts, menu engineering and period comparison needs the Growth plan or above. The pricing page has the full breakdown.

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

Every report can be read for a single location or for the whole organization. When you run a group of venues, the organization view adds up sales and costs across locations and recalculates percentages from the totals, rather than averaging each venue's percentage. For how locations are structured, see multi-location management.

Set owners before you pull any data

A report without an owner is a screenshot. Decide in advance who defines the numbers, who explains them and who acts on them.

• The operations lead owns the definitions, the date ranges and the agenda for the review.
• Location managers explain their own exceptions and own the follow-up actions.
• Finance or the owner checks that the trend matches the bank account and the margin.

A weekly food cost review, step by step

Use the same structure every week. The value comes from comparison, and comparison only works if the frame stays still.

1. 1Open Reports and pick a fixed date range, for example last week Monday to Sunday, and the same location or organization scope you used last time.
2. 2Start in Costs with the COGS trend, then open Waste and Stockouts to see what was lost and what ran out.
3. 3Open Food Cost Variance and list the five items with the largest gap between recipe cost and actual spend.
4. 4Check which of those ingredients changed price recently on supplier invoices or rs.ge waybills, since a price change can look like a portioning problem.
5. 5Turn each finding into one action with a named owner and a deadline, such as re-weighing the chakapuli portion or recording herb waste at close.
6. 6At the start of the next review, check last week's actions first and note whether the number moved.

What good looks like

• Each manager can explain why their key numbers moved and what changed in the kitchen.
• Actions from the review are written down, owned and checked on schedule.
• Leadership compares like with like: the same range, the same scope, the same definitions.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Changing filters every week makes trends meaningless; save a standard view and stick to it. Insights without owners fade by Wednesday; assign every finding to a person. Skipping follow-up turns the review into a ritual; reserve the first ten minutes for last week's actions.

For a deeper look at the gap between the two costs, read actual vs theoretical food cost. To take numbers out of Wox for your accountant, see data export, and for an overview of every report, visit the analytics feature.