What-If Profit Simulator
See the profit impact of any change before you make it
The what-if simulator sits inside the Profitability tab. Three sliders model a change in ingredient costs, labor costs, or selling price and show the impact on every item's food cost and margin right away. Test a scenario in seconds. Decide with real numbers.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Most pricing decisions are made by feel. The What-If Simulator makes them by numbers
A supplier raises flour prices by 20%. A new hire adds SAR 3,000 to monthly payroll. A competitor drops their prices and you feel pressure to match. In all of these, you need to know what the change means for your margin before you act, not after.
The usual approach is to wait until month end, update the accounts, and find out the damage after it's already happened. Prices have already been charged, dishes already sold, margin already lost. The what-if simulator lets you test the impact first, across every item at once, and respond before the change actually hits your business.
Example: A restaurant owner hears chicken breast prices are rising 15% industry-wide. She moves the ingredient cost slider to +15%. The profitability table updates right away, the grilled chicken salad's food cost rises from 33.7% to 37.9%, pushing it above her 35% threshold. She sees the impact before the price rise even takes effect, and decides now: raise the selling price, cut the portion size, or swap an ingredient. The decision gets made with data, not after the fact.
The What-If Profit Simulator answers every "what if" question with a real number instantly, before anything changes.
HOW IT WORKS
Three sliders, one for each cost you control
Ingredient cost change (−50% to +100%)
Moves the ingredient cost in every recipe up or down by the percentage you set. Slide it to +20% and see what happens if all ingredient costs rise by that much: cost per serving goes up, food cost percentage rises, profit and margin fall. Every item updates at once in the table. Use this to test a supplier price increase before it happens, or to see how much room you have before hitting your food cost limit.
Labor cost change (−50% to +100%)
Moves the labour cost in every recipe up or down. Useful for checking the margin impact of a pay rise, a new hire, or a change in hours. Combine it with the ingredient slider to model both pressures at once, say +10% on ingredients and +15% on labour, and see the combined effect across your whole menu before either change actually happens.
Selling price change (−30% to +100%)
Moves the selling price of every item up or down. Raise it and your food cost percentage and margin improve. Lower it and they get squeezed. This one's most useful for testing a price increase: drag it to +10% and see right away whether that covers the margin lost to rising ingredient costs, or whether you need to go higher. The −30% limit exists because deeper price cuts stop being useful to model, most items would be sold at or below cost at that point.
REAL EXAMPLE
Testing three options for an underperforming latte
The what-if simulator isn't a separate page. It sits as a panel on the right side of the Profitability tab, next to the category cards and the item table at all times. Move a slider and the table updates. No page changes, no button to press.
Each slider covers a different part of the business. Ingredient cost change runs from −50% to +100%, so it can model a supplier discount just as easily as a price spike. Labour cost change runs the same range. Selling price change runs from −30% to +100%, tighter on the low end since steep price cuts hit margins hard and fast. With all three sliders at 0%, the table shows your current live numbers. Move any slider, and every row recalculates.
WHAT YOU GET
What changes when you can test decisions before you make them
- Impact on every item at once, not one recipe at a time. The Profitability table shows every item together. Move the ingredient cost slider, and every row updates at the same time. You see the full menu impact of a cost change in one view, instead of checking recipes one by one.
- Find the exact price increase you need. If ingredient costs rise 15%, drag the selling price slider until your food cost percentages return to target. Whatever the slider shows is the price increase you actually need, no manual maths.
- Model more than one change at a time. Real cost pressure rarely hits from just one direction. Move all three sliders together and see the combined effect, so you're testing what's actually happening, not just one isolated variable.
- Nothing changes in your live data. The simulator only changes what the table shows, not your real recipe costs, ingredient prices, or settings. Hit reset and everything goes back to your live numbers. There's no risk of accidentally changing a real cost while you're testing something.
- Decide before the change hits, not after. Once a price change takes effect, the chance to respond ahead of it is gone. The simulator is built to be used in advance, before you raise prices, before a supplier invoice lands, before a contract renews. The value is in using it early.
QUESTIONS
No. The simulator only changes what the table displays, it doesn't touch any real recipe, ingredient price, or setting. Your live data stays exactly as it was. Click reset, and the table goes back to showing your current numbers. To make an actual change, update the ingredient, staff cost, or overhead setting directly.
The ingredient cost slider adjusts the ingredient and packaging cost in every recipe by the percentage shown. The labour cost slider adjusts the labour cost in every recipe. The selling price slider adjusts the selling price of every item. All three flow through to give you updated food cost percentage, profit, and margin for each item in the table. When any slider is off 0%, the cost per serving shown is the simulated cost, not the actual one.
The simulator applies changes across every ingredient at once, it's built for whole-menu scenarios, not single-ingredient ones. If you want to test something specific, like what happens if only chicken breast rises 20%, the most accurate way is to update that ingredient's price directly in the library and check the Profitability tab. The simulator is for quick, menu-wide testing. The ingredient library is where precise, single-ingredient changes belong.
A 30% price cut is already extremely aggressive for any F&B business, at that level, most items would be sold at or near cost. Going further would produce numbers that aren't useful for a real decision. The −50% range on ingredient and labour makes more sense, since cost reductions of that size, through supplier deals or efficiency gains, are realistic to model even if rarely fully achieved.
It's built into the Profitability tab, appearing as a panel on the right side of the screen next to the profitability table. There's no separate page to find. While you're reviewing your menu, the simulator is already visible, so you can move a slider the moment you notice something, like an item with a higher food cost than expected, and see what different options would look like.
Stop guessing. Start simulating.
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