Most kitchens do parts of food cost management. Somebody costs the new dishes, somebody signs off invoices, somebody counts the stock at month end. What separates operations that hold their margin from operations that wonder where it went is not effort in any one part; it is whether the parts run as one connected system. This is the complete picture: what food cost management actually is, the five-stage loop that runs it, who owns each stage, and how to tell whether yours is working.
So why do some restaurants head into each new year with confidence while others continue to struggle with constant firefighting? The menus may be similar. Often, the suppliers are the same. Market pressures are nearly identical. Yet one group protects margins while the other quietly loses them. What separates the two?
