Restaurant Margin Checklist: What Your POS Doesn't Show

A 15-minute weekly margin check for restaurant owners. It covers the four places money leaks before it reaches you: delivery app fees, food cost, wastage and stock. Tick it off on your phone, or print it for the office.

Your weekly check0 of 0 done

The weekly margin checklist

Do it on the same day every week, before you look at sales. Monday morning works for most outlets. Your ticks are saved on this device only.

1. Sales, net of fees ~4 min

The POS shows what customers paid. What lands in your bank is smaller, and the gap moves every week.

Download last week's payout statement from every delivery appNot the dashboard total. The statement lists each deduction. Write down commission, marketing fees and merchant-funded vouchers as separate linesVouchers you fund come off before commission. They're the line owners most often miss. Check the payout against your POS delivery sales for the same weekA gap over 1–2% usually means refunds, cancelled orders or missing tablets.

2. Food cost ~5 min

"Food cost about 30%" is a feeling. The number that matters is what you actually used.

Work out actual food cost: opening stock + purchases − closing stockDivide by food sales for the same week to get your actual food cost %. Compare it with your recipe (theoretical) food costA gap of more than 2–3 points means portioning, wastage or theft. Find out which before it grows. Update recipe costs for any ingredient whose supplier price changedCheck this week's invoices. One price rise on a key ingredient can move a dish's margin by several points. Re-check your top 10 dishes by volumeThey carry most of your margin. Cost those properly first. The rest can wait.

3. Wastage ~2 min

If it isn't written down, it shows up later as "food cost went up" with no explanation.

Keep a wastage log at the kitchen, filled in dailyItem, quantity, reason: prep error, spoilage, returned dish, staff meal. Add up the week's wastage in dollars, not just items Find the top 3 wasted items and agree one change for eachSmaller prep batch, a later order, a shorter shelf life.

4. Stock count ~3 min to review

You don't need to count everything every week. You need to count the right things, the same way, every time.

Count only your top 20 items by value every weekProteins, seafood, alcohol and any premium ingredient. Do a full count once a month. Count on the same day, at the same time, before deliveries arrive Check par levels against what you actually used, and adjust next week's order

5. The one-page Monday number ~1 min

Put the results on one page. If you can only look at one thing each week, look at this.

Fill in the six lines below, for each outlet Compare with last week and circle the one line that moved most

MONDAY · LAST WEEK · OUTLET __

Sales, all channelsS$ ____

Net of app fees and vouchersS$ ____

Actual food cost___ %

Recipe food cost___ %

WastageS$ ____

Margin, this outlet___ %

What does one delivery order really make you?

Put in a typical delivery order. Use the numbers from your own payout statement, not the app's sales page.

Order value (S$)What the customer paid for food

App commission (%)From your payout statement

Merchant-funded discount (S$)Vouchers or promos you pay for

Food cost (%)Your recipe cost for this order

Packaging (S$)Containers, bag, cutlery, sauce cups

Extra delivery wastage (%)Remakes, refunds, over-portioning

LEFT AFTER FOOD, FEES AND PACKAGING

S$0 per order

Commission is worked out on the order value after merchant-funded discounts, which is how most platforms do it. Check your own contract. Rent, labour and utilities still have to come out of what's left.

Doing this by hand every Monday? Most outlets can get the one-page number to fill itself in from the POS, the delivery apps and supplier invoices. If you want to talk through how that would work for your outlets, I do a free 20-minute call. No pitch deck. Book a 20-minute systems review