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In the hospitality business, your Gross Profit (GP) margin is the single most important metric for your kitchen's success.
It’s the money you make from food sales after subtracting the direct cost of the food used to make those dishes. Everything else—labour, rent, electricity, rates—gets paid out of that profit.
A high GP margin means a healthy, profitable business. A low GP margin means you are working hard for very little return. The goal, therefore, is not just to know your GP, but to actively increase it. This is the primary function of a professional food stocktake.
1. Your Potential GP: This is your theoretical, "perfect world" profit. It's the margin you should make if every dish were made with perfect portions, zero waste, and no supplier errors. We calculate this by doing plate costing.
2. Your Actual GP: This is the real-world number. It's what's left at the end of the month after all the waste, over-portioning, staff meals, and supplier overcharges have taken their toll.
The space between these two numbers is your "GP Gap." It is pure, lost profit. A professional food stocktake is designed to find, measure, and close that gap.
1. It Pinpoints All Waste & Loss (The Obvious Drain) You can't stop waste if you don't know where it's happening. A stocktake report quantifies your losses. It might show a 10% variance in your meat section or a 15% variance in dry goods. This data allows you to stop "guessing" and start acting. You can retrain staff on portion control, fix the storage issue in the walk-in, or address the problem of staff food not being recorded.
2. It Flags Supplier Overcharging (The Hidden Drain) This is the fastest way to increase your GP. Our stocktakers audit your invoices against your agreed pricing. When we find a "price creep" or a deviation on a high-value item like salmon or fillet steak, that's an immediate, actionable saving. We’ve seen this step alone save clients hundreds—sometimes thousands—of euros, which goes straight back to your Gross Profit.
3. It Enables Menu Engineering (The Strategic Fix) You can't have a high-profit business without a high-profit menu. To do this, you need to know the exact GP margin per dish. A key part of our service is plate costing. Once you know your "Stars" (high profit, high popularity) and your "Plowhorses" (low profit, high popularity), you can strategically engineer your menu. You can re-price the Plowhorse, promote the Star, or redesign the dish to make it more profitable.
4. It Identifies Theft (The Unspoken Drain) No one wants to think about it, but it happens. A regular variance that can't be explained by waste or portioning is often a sign of theft. A regular, independent stocktake is the single best deterrent. When staff know a professional is coming to count and analyse everything, opportunistic theft disappears.
The cost of a professional stocktake service is negligible compared to the savings it identifies and the profit it unlocks. Regular stocktaking helps foodservice operators optimise gross profits and provides one of the highest returns on investment in the industry.
Stop leaving money on the table. Your Gross Profit margin is not fixed. It's a number you can control and improve.
Contact Hospitality Partners today to close your "GP Gap" and boost your profitability.
It’s the money you make from food sales after subtracting the direct cost of the food used to make those dishes. Everything else—labour, rent, electricity, rates—gets paid out of that profit.
A high GP margin means a healthy, profitable business. A low GP margin means you are working hard for very little return. The goal, therefore, is not just to know your GP, but to actively increase it. This is the primary function of a professional food stocktake.
Understanding the "GP Gap"
The most important concept to grasp is the "GP Gap." This is the difference between two numbers:1. Your Potential GP: This is your theoretical, "perfect world" profit. It's the margin you should make if every dish were made with perfect portions, zero waste, and no supplier errors. We calculate this by doing plate costing.
2. Your Actual GP: This is the real-world number. It's what's left at the end of the month after all the waste, over-portioning, staff meals, and supplier overcharges have taken their toll.
The space between these two numbers is your "GP Gap." It is pure, lost profit. A professional food stocktake is designed to find, measure, and close that gap.
4 Ways a Stocktake Closes the Gap and Boosts Your GP
A stocktake is not a passive report; it's an active tool for profit-building. Here’s how it works.1. It Pinpoints All Waste & Loss (The Obvious Drain) You can't stop waste if you don't know where it's happening. A stocktake report quantifies your losses. It might show a 10% variance in your meat section or a 15% variance in dry goods. This data allows you to stop "guessing" and start acting. You can retrain staff on portion control, fix the storage issue in the walk-in, or address the problem of staff food not being recorded.
2. It Flags Supplier Overcharging (The Hidden Drain) This is the fastest way to increase your GP. Our stocktakers audit your invoices against your agreed pricing. When we find a "price creep" or a deviation on a high-value item like salmon or fillet steak, that's an immediate, actionable saving. We’ve seen this step alone save clients hundreds—sometimes thousands—of euros, which goes straight back to your Gross Profit.
3. It Enables Menu Engineering (The Strategic Fix) You can't have a high-profit business without a high-profit menu. To do this, you need to know the exact GP margin per dish. A key part of our service is plate costing. Once you know your "Stars" (high profit, high popularity) and your "Plowhorses" (low profit, high popularity), you can strategically engineer your menu. You can re-price the Plowhorse, promote the Star, or redesign the dish to make it more profitable.
4. It Identifies Theft (The Unspoken Drain) No one wants to think about it, but it happens. A regular variance that can't be explained by waste or portioning is often a sign of theft. A regular, independent stocktake is the single best deterrent. When staff know a professional is coming to count and analyse everything, opportunistic theft disappears.
It's an Investment, Not an Expense
Think of it this way: a 2% improvement in your Gross Profit margin for a restaurant with €500,000 in annual food sales is €10,000 in pure, additional profit.The cost of a professional stocktake service is negligible compared to the savings it identifies and the profit it unlocks. Regular stocktaking helps foodservice operators optimise gross profits and provides one of the highest returns on investment in the industry.
Stop leaving money on the table. Your Gross Profit margin is not fixed. It's a number you can control and improve.
Contact Hospitality Partners today to close your "GP Gap" and boost your profitability.