How yield turns purchase price into plate cost
Yield is the largest single correction between an invoice and a plate, it varies by supplier and by season, and it is almost always taken from a table somebody found rather than from a scale.
Key takeaways
- Measure yield in your own kitchen, three times, and average it.
- Yield varies by supplier and by season; re-measure when either changes.
- Trim loss and cooking loss compound; apply both.
- Trim with a use has a value and should be credited, with the assumption stated.
- A yield below expectation is a supplier finding, not just a costing input.
Measuring it
- Compute
- Machine learning
- Analytics
- Front-end & mobile
- People
Why not a published table
Published yields describe an average specification prepared by an average person. Your supplier’s trim specification, your chef’s preferences and your portioning all differ, and the spread between kitchens on the same ingredient is wide enough to move a dish cost by twenty per cent.
The table is a reasonable starting point for a dish that has never been made. It should be replaced by a measurement the first time the ingredient is actually prepared, and flagged as unmeasured until then so nobody mistakes it for a fact.
It changes
A different supplier, a different specification, a seasonal change in size — all move yield. Small root vegetables have worse yield than large ones because peeling loss is proportional to surface area, which is why winter costings on some vegetables are genuinely different from summer ones.
Re-measuring quarterly on the top ten ingredients by spend covers most of the exposure and is an hour a quarter.
Two losses, compounded
Which of the two applies depends on how the recipe states its quantities. A recipe written in cooked weight on the plate needs both; one written in prepared raw weight needs only the trim yield.
That distinction has to be explicit per recipe line, because getting it wrong in either direction produces a cost that is out by twenty per cent and looks entirely plausible.
Trim that has value
How to treat the offcuts
- Bones and trim that become stock have a real value: what you would otherwise buy.
- Credit them at that replacement value, not at the purchase price of the original ingredient.
- Only if they are actually used. Trim that is thrown away when the stock pot is full is a cost.
- State the assumption on the costing, because it is a judgement and it can be generous.
- Staff food is a cost, and belongs in its own line rather than hidden in yield.
- When in doubt, do not credit it. An uncredited yield is conservative and an over-credited one silently improves every dish on the menu.
The last line is worth holding to. Yield credits are the easiest place for optimism to enter a costing model, and once it is there it improves every dish by a few per cent in a way nobody can see.
Yield as a supplier signal
A yield that drops from sixty-eight to sixty-one per cent on the same ingredient is a supplier telling you something: a change in specification, more fat, more trim, smaller units. The price per kilo may not have moved at all while the cost per plate went up eleven per cent.
That is a genuinely useful finding and it is invisible without measured yields. It is also a specific, evidenced conversation with the supplier rather than a general complaint about quality.
Next: why a costing needs a date.
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