Prep planning
Pars that move with the day, not the week.
MarginKitchen recomputes prep against tomorrow's forecasted covers, yesterday's waste and today's ingredient costs — so the kitchen pulls the right amount of the right items, every shift.
Prep plan
−34%
morning waste
The leak
Static prep sheets quietly waste a week of profit.
When pars never change, slow nights produce dumped pans and busy nights run out of the hero dish. Both leak margin you'll see only at month-end on the P&L.
- Tuesday's slow night, Friday's worth of hummus.
- 86 your highest-margin dish at peak.
- Sunday mise dumped — same SKU, same shift, every week.
- Sub-recipes never re-costed when ingredient prices move.
How operators use it
A prep plan that learns from every shift.
MarginKitchen builds the prep sheet against tomorrow's cover forecast, blends in waste history by station and shift, and flags the pull-forwards that protect peak service. Chef approves or overrides every line.
- Pars recomputed nightly and again at 06:00
- Pull-forwards and batch sizes costed against forecast
- Sub-recipes reflect today's invoice prices
- Waste pattern detection by station, shift and SKU
- Override any line — the model learns the override
Service timeline
How a kitchen manager runs prep with MarginKitchen.
- Step 01
Night before
Prep plan generates from tomorrow's forecast plus a 4-week waste pattern.
- Step 02
06:00
Plan refreshes with the morning's reservations and weather updates.
- Step 03
06:30
Chef walks the line, adjusts any par, and prints the sheet.
- Step 04
Mid-shift
Pull-forward alerts if items track ahead of forecast.
- Step 05
End of shift
Actuals reconcile against pars and the model learns for tomorrow.
Connected workflows
Prep is downstream of demand, upstream of waste.
Stop prepping for the wrong day.
Import your menu, recipes and four weeks of sales — your first adaptive prep plan is ready before tomorrow's shift.
FAQ
Questions operators actually ask.
No. MarginKitchen sits on top of the POS, schedule and vendor invoices you already use. We turn that data into the daily decisions a POS won't tell you — what to prep, who to staff, what to re-price, what to 86.