The 40 Thieves of Food Costs: Stop the Losses Stealing Your Profit

Food cost reflects the strength of your systems. Even small breakdowns can snowball into major financial loss. Over‑ordering, weak purchasing controls, receiving errors, improper storage, excessive trim, overproduction, portion inconsistency, unrecorded sales, and unauthorized employee meals all add up fast. This session highlights the risks, patterns, and blind spots that matter most right now so you can reduce waste, strengthen accountability, and protect your margins.

This webinar is built specifically for New Mexico restaurants and gives operators a clear roadmap to controlling food cost. You will:

• Purchasing — Break down common mistakes like overbuying, missing product specs, lack of competitive pricing, and failure to audit invoices.

• Receiving — Understand vulnerabilities such as theft, incorrect quantities, missing credits, improper check‑in procedures, and lack of proper equipment.

• Storage — Learn how temperature issues, poor organization, improper labeling, and weak inventory systems drive unnecessary loss.

• Prep — Identify habits that inflate food cost, including excessive trim, poor knife skills, lack of standardized recipes, and inconsistent prep yields.

• Production — Pinpoint overproduction, incorrect cooking methods, batch‑size errors, and waste created by poor forecasting.

• Service — Recognize portion inconsistency, spillage, plate waste, and missing production records that quietly erode margins.

• Sales — Break down losses tied to unrecorded transactions, incorrect pricing, unauthorized employee meals, discounts, comps, and missing trend data.

This session is designed for owners, operators, general managers, kitchen managers, chefs, inventory leads, and anyone responsible for food cost, purchasing, or operational efficiency.

If you want to protect your margins, eliminate preventable waste, strengthen accountability, and build a more profitable operation, this is the webinar you can’t afford to miss. You’ll walk away with practical guidance, clear action steps, and the confidence to tighten up your food‑cost controls right away.