Food Waste Cost Report
Food Waste Cost Report turns your logged wastage entries into three views — top items by waste cost, cost broken down by reason, and a 30-day daily trend chart — so you can see exactly where kitchen money is being lost and whether a particular day or cause is driving it.
Overview
This report reads the same wastage entries recorded in Wastage Log — it is a read-only analytics view over that data, filtered by a From/To date range you choose (defaults to the last 30 days).
Summary cards show Total Waste Cost, Average Daily Loss, the single Top Wasted Item (by cost) and the single Top Waste Reason (by cost) for the selected range.
The "By Ingredient" tab shows a bar chart and table of the top wasted items ranked by total cost lost, each with total quantity and number of entries.
The "By Reason" tab breaks total waste cost down by reason (Expired, Overcooked, Dropped, Over-prepared, Spoiled, Customer Reject, Training/Testing, Other) with a percentage share of the total.
The "Daily Trend" tab shows a bar chart of daily waste cost across the range, flags any day more than 1.4× the average as a "high waste day", and lists a breakdown grid of every day that actually had waste.
Before You Start
- You must have the Billing feature enabled on your plan.
- Entries must already exist in Wastage Log for this report to show any data — it does not generate figures on its own.
Step-by-Step Guide
1 Review overall waste cost for a period
- Open Kitchen Operations → Food Waste Cost Report.
- Set the From and To dates (defaults to the last 30 days) and click "Go".
- Check the four summary cards for total cost, average daily loss, and the top item/reason at a glance.
2 Find which ingredients cost the most in waste
- Switch to the "By Ingredient" tab.
- Read the bar chart or table, sorted by total cost lost — each row also shows total quantity wasted and number of log entries.
3 Understand why waste is happening
- Switch to the "By Reason" tab to see cost and percentage share for each wastage reason.
- Use this to decide whether the fix is process (e.g. reduce over-preparation) or supplier-side (e.g. frequent spoilage on delivery).
4 Spot unusually high-waste days
- Switch to the "Daily Trend" tab to see the day-by-day cost bars, with days over 1.4× the period average highlighted in a darker red.
- Use the daily breakdown grid below the chart to identify and investigate specific high-waste dates.
Every Field & Button, Explained
| Field / Button | What it does |
|---|---|
Total Waste Cost | Sum of all wastage entry costs within the selected date range. |
Avg Daily Loss | Total Waste Cost ÷ number of days in the range. |
Top Wasted Item / Top Waste Reason | The single highest-cost ingredient / reason within the range, shown as quick headline figures. |
By Ingredient rows | Ingredient name, total quantity wasted, total cost lost, and number of log entries contributing to it. |
By Reason rows | Reason label, total cost, entry count and percentage share of total waste cost in the range. |
High waste day | Any single day in the Daily Trend whose total cost exceeds 1.4× the period's average daily cost — highlighted in red on the chart and in the breakdown grid. |
Tips & Best Practices
- Check this report weekly rather than only when something feels wrong — a slow creep in one ingredient's waste cost is easy to miss day-to-day but obvious once aggregated.
- Cross-reference a high-waste day here with your reservation/covers data for that date — over-production ahead of an expected rush that did not materialize is a common cause.
- If "By Reason" is dominated by one cause, address the root cause directly (e.g. retrain on portioning for Over-prepared, or raise a supplier issue for repeated Spoiled).