Waste-adjusted margin
What an item actually made after prep waste, comps, and early sellouts — not what the recipe card said it should have made.
Two margins, and only one is real
Theoretical margin takes one plate you sold and divides its price by its recipe cost. It is the number on every costing spreadsheet and inside most costing software. It answers: if this plate sells at full price, what does it earn?
Waste-adjusted margin takes a whole service and divides the revenue you actually collected by everything that service actually consumed — the plates you sold, plus the ones you prepped and binned, plus the ones you comped. It answers the question an operator is really asking: did this item make me money last night?
theoretical margin = (price − unit cost) ÷ price
waste-adjusted margin = (revenue collected − ingredients consumed) ÷ revenue collected
On a truck the two diverge fast, because a truck has no second service to sell yesterday into. Whatever you over-prepped is gone at the end of the night.
A 70.0% item that made 57.0%
One booking, one item. Every number below is arithmetic you can check.
| Menu price | $14.00 |
| Recipe cost per portion | $4.20 |
| Theoretical margin | 70.0% |
| Portions prepped | 60 |
| Portions sold | 44 |
| Portions comped | 3 |
| Revenue collected | $616.00 |
| Ingredients consumed (63 portions) | $264.60 |
| Waste-adjusted margin | 57.0% |
The recipe card says this item earns 70.0%. It earned 57.0%. Nothing was mispriced and nobody made a mistake — 16 portions were prepped and not sold, and 3 were comped. That is the entire difference, and it is invisible in every tool that stops at the recipe card.
This example is illustrative — the figures are chosen to show the arithmetic, not taken from a customer's books.
Four things theoretical margin can't see
Prep waste
You prepped 60 portions and sold 44. The 16 that went in the bin cost you ingredients but earned nothing — and theoretical margin never sees them.
Early sellouts
Selling out at 7:15 looks like a win. It is unsold demand: the margin those tickets would have carried never existed, and your theoretical numbers can't show a negative.
Comps and staff meals
Every comped plate carries full food cost at zero revenue. A handful a night is a real percentage point off a truck's margin.
Moving ingredient prices
The recipe card you costed in spring is not the recipe you're cooking in autumn. Margin drifts down quietly between the times anyone re-checks it.
Two data sources, and one of them takes two minutes
Half the inputs already exist. Your Square sales supply what sold, at what price, at which location. Your recipe costs supply what each portion consumed.
The other half is the part no POS can know: what you prepped, what was left over, what got comped, and what sold out before close. That is the whole closeout — four numbers per item, on a phone, with the sold quantities already filled in from Square. It is deliberately the shortest form that still produces an honest number, because a closeout that takes ten minutes doesn't get filled in on a Saturday night.
From there it is arithmetic, run per item per booking, and rolled up so you can compare the same item across trucks, event types, and weeks. See it applied to a whole menu in menu costing, or check what connects in integrations.
Waste-adjusted margin FAQ
What is waste-adjusted margin?
Waste-adjusted margin is a menu item's gross margin after the ingredients you bought but did not sell are charged against the revenue you actually collected. Theoretical margin divides one sold plate's price by one sold plate's cost. Waste-adjusted margin divides the revenue a service produced by everything that service consumed — including prepped-and-binned portions, comps, and staff meals.
How is waste-adjusted food cost different from theoretical food cost?
Theoretical food cost is the recipe-card number: ingredient cost divided by menu price. Waste-adjusted food cost is total ingredients consumed divided by total revenue collected for that item across a service. On a truck the gap between the two is usually widest on high-prep proteins and anything with a short shelf life.
How does GriddleMath know what I wasted?
Your POS tells us what sold. The two-minute closeout tells us the rest — what you prepped, what was left, what got comped, and what sold out. That is the smallest set of numbers that makes the calculation honest, which is why the closeout asks for those and nothing else.
Isn't this just food cost variance?
It is closely related. Multi-unit restaurant software calls it actual-versus-theoretical and computes it from inventory counts over a period. A truck does not run periodic inventory counts, and a booking is a one-shot bet on prep with no second service to absorb a bad call. GriddleMath computes it per item per booking, from a closeout an operator can finish standing next to the truck.
What do I do once I can see it?
Three things, in order: cut prep on items that consistently waste, re-price items whose waste-adjusted margin sits below target, and prep more of anything that sells out early at a healthy margin. GriddleMath turns each of those into a specific recommendation with the numbers behind it.