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 that model a change in ingredient costs, labour costs, or selling price, and instantly show the impact on every menu item's food cost percentage and margin. Test a scenario in seconds. Decide with 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 the monthly payroll. A competitor's price move creates pressure to cut prices. All of these are situations where a business owner needs to know — before acting — what the change means for margin.
The usual approach is to wait until month-end, update the accounts, and discover the impact after the fact. By then, prices have already been charged, dishes have already been sold, and the margin damage has already happened. The What-If Simulator makes it possible to test the impact first — on every item simultaneously — and respond before the change hits the business.
Example: A restaurant owner hears that chicken breast prices are rising 15% industry-wide. She slides the Ingredient cost change slider to +15%. The profitability table updates immediately — the Grilled Chicken Salad's food cost rises from 33.7% to 37.9%, pushing it above the 35% threshold. She can see the impact before the price increase takes effect and decide now: raise the selling price, reduce portion size, or substitute an ingredient. The decision is 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 lever your business controls
Ingredient cost change (−50% to +100%)
Moves the ingredient cost component of every recipe up or down by the percentage shown. A +20% slider models what happens if all ingredient costs rise by 20% — the cost per serving increases, the food cost percentage rises, the profit and margin fall. The table shows the new figures for every item simultaneously. Use this to test the impact of a supplier price increase before it happens, or to see how much headroom exists before hitting your food cost threshold.
Labor cost change (−50% to +100%)
Moves the labour cost component of every recipe up or down. Useful when evaluating the margin impact of a pay rise, a new team member, or a change in working hours. Combined with the ingredient cost slider, it lets you model compounding cost pressures — for example, +10% ingredients and +15% labour at the same time — and see the combined margin impact across the full menu before either change takes effect.
Selling price change (−30% to +100%)
Moves the selling price of every item up or down. Increasing the selling price improves the food cost percentage and margin; decreasing it compresses them. This slider is most useful when evaluating a price increase: drag it to +10% and see immediately whether that price rise restores the margin eroded by rising ingredient costs, or whether a larger increase is needed. The −30% lower bound prevents modelling price cuts so severe they become analytically unhelpful.
REAL EXAMPLE
Testing three options for an underperforming latte
The What-If Simulator is not a separate page. It lives as a panel on the right side of the Profitability tab — visible alongside the category summary cards and the item table at all times. Move a slider and the table updates. No page changes, no recalculation button to press.
The three sliders each cover a different dimension of the business. Ingredient cost change runs from −50% to +100% — modelling a supplier discount as easily as a price spike. Labor cost change also runs −50% to +100%. Selling price change runs −30% to +100% — the lower bound is tighter because steep price cuts have an immediate and severe impact on margins. At 0% on all three sliders, the table shows current live data. Move any slider and every row in the table 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 all five items simultaneously. Move the ingredient cost slider and all five rows update at the same time. You see the full menu impact of a cost change in a single view, not by checking recipes individually.
- The exact price increase needed to defend your margins. If ingredient costs rise by 15%, drag the Selling price slider until food cost percentages return to target. The percentage the slider shows is the price increase you need. No manual calculation required.
- Compound scenarios — multiple changes modelled simultaneously. Real cost environments change across multiple dimensions at once. The What-If Simulator lets you move all three sliders simultaneously and see the combined effect — so you're modelling the real situation, not an isolated variable.
- No changes made to live data. The simulator is a display layer over your live profitability data. Moving a slider does not update any recipe, ingredient price, or cost — it only changes what the table shows. Reset Simulator returns everything to live data. There is no risk of accidentally modifying real costs while exploring scenarios.
- Decisions made before the cost change hits — not after. The window for a proactive response closes the moment a price change takes effect. The What-If Simulator is designed to be used in advance — before raising prices, before a supplier invoice arrives, before a contract is renewed. The insight is only useful before the decision is made.
QUESTIONS
No. The What-If Simulator is a display overlay — it changes what the profitability table shows without modifying any underlying recipe, ingredient price, or cost setting. Your live data is unchanged throughout. When you click Reset Simulator, the table returns to showing your current live numbers. To make an actual change to a cost, you update the relevant ingredient, staff member, or overhead setting directly.
The Ingredient cost change slider adjusts the ingredient and packaging cost components of every recipe by the percentage shown. The Labor cost change slider adjusts the labour cost component of every recipe. The Selling price change slider adjusts the selling price of every item. All three changes flow through to produce updated food cost percentage, profit, and margin figures for each item in the table. The cost per serving shown in the table reflects the simulated, not the actual, cost when any slider is away from 0%.
The What-If Simulator applies changes across all ingredients simultaneously — it's a menu-wide tool, not a per-ingredient tool. For a more targeted analysis of a specific ingredient price change (for example, modelling what happens if only chicken breast rises by 20%), the most accurate approach is to update the ingredient price in the library directly and view the resulting change in the Profitability tab. The simulator is designed for quick, whole-menu scenario modelling; the ingredient library is the right place for precise per-ingredient cost changes.
A 30% price reduction is already an extremely aggressive cut for any F&B business — at that level, most items would be sold below or very close to cost. Extending the lower bound further to −50% would produce margin figures that aren't meaningful for practical decision-making (items sold at a large loss). The −50% lower bound on ingredient and labour sliders is more useful because cost reductions of that magnitude — through supplier negotiations, efficiency improvements, or ingredient substitutions — are realistic to model even if rarely achieved fully. Asymmetric bounds keep the simulator focused on scenarios that are practically relevant.
The What-If Simulator is built into the Profitability tab — it appears as a panel on the right side of the screen, next to the profitability table. There is no separate page or separate feature to navigate to. When you're reviewing your menu's profitability, the simulator is already visible alongside the data. This makes it easy to move a slider in response to something you notice in the table — for example, an item with a higher-than-expected food cost — and immediately see what different scenarios look like.
Stop guessing. Start simulating.
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