Ask Claude About Food Cost: 5 Questions That Save Money

Most restaurants look at food cost once a month, when it is too late to change anything: the purchasing is done, the dishes are sold, and the margin has "gone somewhere". The answer is in your data, but getting it out means opening three reports, exporting a table and matching numbers by hand. Owners in Tbilisi or Batumi rarely have the time.

There is a simpler way: ask in plain language. RestIQ has an MCP server (Model Context Protocol) that connects AI assistants such as Claude Desktop to your venue's data, so they can answer questions about revenue, purchases, inventory counts and recipe calculations. Below are five food cost questions to start with, and what sits behind each one.

What has to be in place first

The assistant does not guess; it reads your data. Answers are only as good as the tech cards and purchase prices in the system. If dishes are not linked to recipes, there is nothing to calculate food cost from. In RestIQ, a dish's cost is built from the latest purchase prices from RS.ge waybills or manual purchase acts, taking gross/net weight and processing loss percentages into account. That is the foundation; everything else sits on top of it.

Question 1. "Which dishes have the highest food cost right now?"

This is the starting point. To answer it, the assistant calls get_recipe_calculations, which returns menu calculations: cost, margin, food cost % and markup. Ask for a sorted view: "show the 10 dishes with the worst food cost %, excluding drinks." Two or three items you were not thinking about usually surface, such as a dish with an expensive protein whose price has not been reviewed in a long time.

Question 2. "What makes up the cost of this dish?"

Once you find a problem dish, take it apart. get_dish_recipe_details shows the tech card: ingredients, weights and each one's share of the cost. Ask: "which ingredient in the Adjarian khachapuri contributes most to cost, and how would food cost change if we cut the cheese portion by 10 grams?" The assistant can run that what-if in seconds, while the decision stays with your chef and you.

Question 3. "What changed in purchase prices over the last month?"

Food cost does not rise only because of portions. Often it is price: a supplier quietly raised a couple of items. get_purchases_analytics (totals, suppliers, top products) and search_purchases (search by waybill, product or supplier) cover this. Ask: "compare beef and butter prices across this month's and last month's waybills; which supplier went up?" That is ready-made material for a conversation with the supplier.

Question 4. "Where do the books and the shelves disagree?"

Theoretical food cost from tech cards is the ideal; the storeroom decides reality. get_inventory_discrepancy_summary gives a combined analysis of inventory discrepancies and problem products, and get_inventory_act_details shows a specific count: book balance against actual. Ask: "which products keep showing shortages in recent inventories?" If the same item comes up short again and again, it is a signal: an oversized portion, a write-off error or a storage problem. Draw conclusions carefully; the numbers show where to look, not who is to blame.

Question 5. "What sells best, and what is its margin?"

A dish with low food cost that nobody orders will not save the business, and a bestseller with a poor margin is a problem too. Link sales and cost: get_top_selling_items shows the leaders (kitchen and bar separately), and the calculations show their margin. Ask: "which of the 5 best-selling dishes have a food cost above target?" Those are the ones to review first: a small price or portion tweak on a bestseller matters more than on a dish ordered once a week.

Turning it into a habit

• Weekly: ask questions 1 and 5. Five minutes, and a clear picture of the menu.
• After each large delivery: question 3, while the waybills are fresh.
• After an inventory count: question 4, to spot recurring discrepancies.
• Before a menu update: questions 1 and 2, so you do not launch dishes with a weak margin.

A word of caution: the assistant works with the data in the system and can misinterpret it. Check key figures in RestIQ reports before changing prices or suppliers.

How RestIQ helps

RestIQ calculates food cost automatically from current purchase prices in RS.ge waybills, and keeps tech cards, purchasing and inventory in one system. The MCP server adds the ability to ask about that data in plain words. We will walk you through connecting Claude or another assistant to your venue when you try the system. More on calculations is on the features page.

Bottom line

Food cost stops being a month-end report when you can check it in a minute: which dishes are getting more expensive, why, and where product is being lost. The five questions above are a ready starting point. Want to see it on real data? 14 days free: /contact.