At Orderly, we’re all about making sure your restaurant’s profitable.
And that means making sure your food costs stay on track each week.
Knowing how much you’re spending versus how much you have left to spend…
That can be the difference between a profitable week and one that’s in the red.
That’s why we’re excited to announce:
You can now manage a weekly food cost budget right inside Orderly.
Having food cost budgeting right in the app opens up many opportunities for you as a restaurant owner.
For starters, you’ll now have the ability to see your goal versus reality.
Then, you can make small adjustments to help control your restaurant’s spending and meet your financial targets.
If you’re already an Orderly customer, this feature is up-and-running right in your account.
Not a customer yet? What are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today and we’ll show you how it works.
The Easiest Way to Stay on Track
Understanding and keeping food costs in check is the bane of many a restaurant manager’s existence.
You have multiple stacks of invoices piling up. There are Excel workbooks to keep track of.
And it’s not like everything else in your restaurant is stopping so you can focus on them.
You’re spending hours at the end of each week or month buried in spreadsheets trying to figure out your numbers. And that eats at valuable time needed for other tasks.
Plus, you keep finding out you’ve overspent, your food costs are way above that 30% goal and you’ve got way too much extra inventory on hand.
You keep falling into this cycle. So, we wanted to help out.
Orderly’s simplified in-app budgeting experience will erase all those headaches.
Creating a weekly budget just takes a few clicks – and then you’ll be ready for the week at hand.
Creating Your First Budget
To get the most out of Orderly, we recommend you sit down with your team weekly to discuss the upcoming week’s sales goals and spend budget.
We’ve made this step easy. On your Orderly Dashboard, you’ll notice a new tab on the left-hand side: “This Week’s Team Meeting.”
In Step 1 for your weekly meeting, we walk you through your estimates for the previous week versus your actual costs. This is broken down into three sections: sales, food spend, and food costs. While in this tab, you can quickly check and diagnose any issues with food spend and costs.
In Step 2, you’ll review last week’s ingredient purchases with your team. Which ingredients are you spending the most money on? What ingredient prices have trended up? And which ingredient prices have trended down?
There’s no price lookup needed. Everything is right inside Orderly.
In Step 3, you’ll use the information gathered in step 1 and 2 to provide a weekly sales estimate for the upcoming week.
This will then automatically give you a food spend budget that will keep your COGS within your goal.
As an example, you might project doing $15,800 in sales for the following week. With a target food cost of no more than 30%, you will need to stay within the target spend of $4,740.
All the numbers looking good? Hit the “commit to budget” button so Orderly can track your progress on the Dashboard.
Tracking Your Budget on the Dashboard
Now that you’ve added your sales estimate for the following week and created a food spend budget, Orderly can track your daily progress on your personal Dashboard.
BUT REMEMBER: Consistent, daily snaps of invoices are needed to help us show your progress through the week.
Once an invoice is added to Orderly, we’ll review the line item details and update your budget accordingly.
In the Key Metrics section of your Orderly Dashboard, you’ll now see two lines included under your food cost and sales numbers.
One is your budget.
The other is your actual spend. If you’re within budget for the week, we’ll show you a bright green bar. But if you’re overspending, the budget bar will turn bright red.
In addition, you’ll see a dotted line in the bar graph that represents your food spend budget.
With a budget in place, every time you snap a new invoice, we’ll update your Dashboard.
So, no matter when you open up Orderly, you’ll have full transparency into how you’re doing.
All the Support You Need
Have questions on how to properly set a budget? Or are you still trying to wrap your head around your food costs?
Don’t sweat it – we’ve got your back.
Our Customer Success Team is here to help. They’re trained to make your restaurant more profitable than ever before – and they’re only a call away!
Ready to get going on your budget? Schedule a meeting with your managers, log into your Orderly account, and select “This Week’s Team Meeting.”
Ready to start saving but not a customer yet? See Orderly’s budgeting tool in action on a live demo.
