Plate cost variance = actual plate cost − standard plate cost. A positive variance means costs exceeded budget; a negative variance means costs came in lower than planned. Variance above ±5% warrants investigation: possible causes include incorrect invoice pricing, yield miscalculation, overportioning, or waste. MenuMargin recalculates plate costs automatically whenever an invoice is uploaded, flagging variance against the stored standard and prompting the operator to update recipe costs or investigate supplier price changes.
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Plate Cost Variance
The difference between budgeted (standard) plate cost and actual plate cost, often caused by portioning drift or price changes.
Related terms
- Plate Cost — The total ingredient cost for a single prepared menu item, calculated from the cost per ingredient portion.
- Recipe Costing — The process of calculating the per-portion cost of a recipe by accounting for every ingredient and yield.
- Invoice OCR — Optical Character Recognition applied to supplier invoices to extract line-item data for automated costing.