How Do I Use WiseFins to Reduce F&B Costs?

WiseFins gives you a clear path from "something looks off" to "here's exactly what to change." Follow these steps to find and fix cost issues systematically.

Step 1: Start with the Big Picture

On your Financial dashboard, review the Cost of Sales section: Total COGS, Food Cost %, Beverage Cost % (via the gauges), and the % Cost of Sales/Month vs. Y-1 trend. This tells you if you have a cost problem and roughly when it started, before you dig into why.

Step 2: Narrow Down by Category

If a signal from your PnL, or the KPIs above, points you toward food or beverage specifically, use the Cost/Item Category and Food/Bev Cost Breakdown by Month charts to see which category (Pizza, Pasta, Wine, etc.) and which meal period is driving the issue.

Step 3: Identify the Specific Offenders

Go to the Top Food/Beverage Items Sold table and filter by the problem category. Two columns matter most here:

• % Margin and Cost % per item, your clearest signal of which specific dishes are underperforming.
• Menu Price vs. Actual Price: Menu Price is what the item is supposed to sell for; Actual Price is what it's actually selling for after discounts. Since margin, % Margin, and Cost % are all calculated against Actual Price, this comparison tells you whether a high cost % is being driven by the recipe itself, or simply by heavy discounting eating into margin, two very different problems with very different fixes.

Step 4: Confirm with Menu Engineering

Use Menu Engineering to confirm how your shortlisted items are actually performing within their category (e.g., how does this pasta dish compare to your other pasta dishes). This gives you an apples-to-apples read on true performance and is often the natural starting point for a cost-reduction effort, items rated "Unsatisfactory" or "Replace" on the Financial axis are your priority list.

Step 5: Drill Into the Recipe

Open the item's Recipe page. Ingredients are automatically highlighted (shown in red) when they carry a notably high cost per kilo, letting you immediately spot which ingredient is actually driving the dish's cost, rather than scanning the full ingredient list yourself.

Step 6: Explore Alternatives

Click Edit Recipe to enter draft mode, this adds a Replace option next to each ingredient. Click Replace on the high-cost ingredient (e.g., thyme), and WiseFins surfaces alternative ingredients from within your existing product data, letting you compare cost per kg, EF Score, and footprint side-by-side before deciding what to swap in.

You can simulate the change before committing, so you'll know the cost (and environmental) impact of the swap before it's applied to the live recipe.