Prime cost forensics: 14 ribeye portions died in plain sight

Your invoice says you bought 40 lbs of ribeye. Your theoretical cost says you should've gotten 142 portions out of it. You got 128.

Nobody stole anything. Nobody's eating it in the walk-in. The 14 portions died in plain sight, one trim cut at a time.

A cook trims an extra quarter-inch "to make it clean," eating into yield on every steak. Two get fired wrong on a busy Saturday push — refired, the originals hit the bin. The end cuts that should've gone to staff meal or a special get tossed because nobody built a use for them. And the portion scale's been sitting in a drawer since the last health inspection.

Each one is invisible on its own. None of it shows up on an invoice. It only shows up in the gap between what you paid for and what rang in.

One slow Tuesday, butcher the protein yourself, weigh the usable portions, and set the real spec — not the one the distributor printed. Then hold the line to it. Spot-check the bin. Spot-check the scale.

Your theoretical food cost is 28%. Your actual is 33%. That five-point gap isn't theft and it isn't price increases. It's the flat top quietly eating your margin every single shift — and your P&L won't tell you which station it's happening on.