Supplier Raised One Price? Use AI to Draft a List of Menu Items It Hits

When one supplier price goes up, the hard part is knowing which menu items it touches, not the math. Give an AI assistant your recipe cards and have it draft one list: the items on those cards that use the ingredient, directly or inside a sub-recipe, with the raw amount per portion. Check that list yourself for anything wrong or missing, work out the cost in a spreadsheet instead of in the chat, and rank the items by extra dollars per week. In the fictional example below, a 50-cent-a-pound increase on ground beef touches six menu items and adds $241.56 a week. The classic burger accounts for more than half of it, and the chili cup is the only item that crosses the owner's food cost target.

This guide uses a fictional restaurant and prompts you can copy. The prompts are a proposed workflow. We haven't tested them against any particular AI product, so treat whatever the assistant produces as a draft and check it against your own recipes and invoices.

Beef is the example because it's moving. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' average U.S. retail price for 100% ground beef was $6.923 a pound in August 2026, the highest published monthly figure in a series that goes back to January 1984. USDA's Economic Research Service forecasts beef and veal prices up 9.4% for 2026. The same steps work for cheese, eggs, fryer oil or any other ingredient that shows up in more than one dish.

Why the list matters more than the math

Most people remember the burger when beef goes up. The items that get missed are the ones where the beef is hidden:

• Sub-recipes. The beef is in the chili, and the chili is in the chili cheese fries.
• Cooked portions. The taco recipe says 2.25 ounces of cooked, drained taco meat, but you buy raw beef.
• Batch recipes. Ten pounds of beef go into a pot that makes 40 cups.

An assistant can do a fast first pass through a stack of pasted recipe cards, including sub-recipes, if you ask it to. We haven't tested how reliably it does that, and it can miss an item or fill a gap with a guess even when you tell it not to. It also can't see a recipe you didn't paste. That's why you check the list and compare it with what you actually use. Money math spread across a long chat is harder to audit, so a spreadsheet handles the numbers.

What to gather first

• Recipe cards for every menu item, plus every sub-recipe: sauces, chili, taco meat, anything made in a batch.
• The cooked yield for anything portioned after cooking. If you don't know it, weigh a batch raw, cook and drain it, and weigh it again.
• The new and old price per pound, read from the invoice.
• How many of each item you sell in a normal week. An average of the last four weeks from your POS product mix report works.
• Current menu prices.

Before you paste anything

Look at your assistant's data settings before you paste recipes or invoices, and find out whether conversations can be used for training or seen by others on your account. If your supplier agreement treats pricing as confidential, leave the price out. The first pass doesn't need any prices at all. It only needs recipes.

Pass 1: draft the list of items that use it

Below are my recipe cards and sub-recipes. List each menu item in these recipes that uses [INGREDIENT], either directly or inside a sub-recipe. Use only what is written in the recipes. Do not estimate missing quantities.

For each menu item, give me one row with:
1. Menu item name
2. How it uses [INGREDIENT]: direct, or through which sub-recipe
3. Quantity of [INGREDIENT] per portion, in the unit written on the card
4. Whether that quantity is raw or cooked, as stated on the card (write "not stated" if it isn't)
5. For batch recipes: total [INGREDIENT] in the batch and the number of portions the batch makes
6. Anything unclear or missing that I need to confirm

Do not calculate costs or convert units. After the table, list any sub-recipe that uses [INGREDIENT] but doesn't appear on any menu item.

The last line asks it to flag a sub-recipe that turns up in a special or a catering menu that isn't on the cards you pasted.

Check the list yourself

Go through each row before any money goes near it, and check four things:

• Raw or cooked? The fictional taco order uses 2.25 ounces of cooked taco meat. The owner weighed a batch and got 75% yield, so that's 3 ounces of raw beef. Costing the cooked weight at the raw price gives 73 cents of beef per order, but the real figure is 98 cents at the new price, 24 cents short on every order.
• Batch divided by portions? The chili uses 10 pounds of beef for 40 cups, so each cup has a quarter pound. If the batch amount slips through as a portion, the chili cup shows $52 of beef, which is easy to spot. A batch that makes 32 cups instead of 40 is harder to spot, so confirm the portion count on the card.
• Every sub-recipe followed? Chili cheese fries take half a cup of chili, which is 2 ounces of raw beef. Leave them off and you miss $6.88 a week in this example. It's small, but it's the kind of item that stays wrong for a year.
• Anything missing? Read your full menu and your POS item list against the draft. Any item that could contain the ingredient but isn't on the list needs its recipe card pulled, and so does any item that has no card at all.

Convert every quantity to pounds of raw beef per portion. Ounces divided by 16 gives pounds.

Do the math in a spreadsheet

Put one row per menu item, with columns for raw pounds per portion, other ingredient cost, menu price and weekly count. Then use three formulas:

• Extra cost per portion = raw pounds × price increase per pound
• Extra cost per week = extra cost per portion × weekly count
• New food cost percentage = (raw pounds × new price + other ingredient cost) ÷ menu price

Here's the fictional counter after beef went from $4.70 to $5.20 a pound. All the prices, costs and counts are made up. The rows are sorted by extra dollars per week.

Everything except the beef (bun, cheese, sides, packaging and the other chili and taco ingredients) is held at the old cost: $1.85 for the classic, $1.95 for the double, $0.55 for the chili cup, $0.95 for the tacos, $1.10 for the kids' burger and $1.20 for the chili cheese fries. Per-portion amounts are rounded to the cent. Weekly figures use the unrounded amounts. Over 52 weeks, that's about $12,561 if the price holds.

Rank by dollars, then look at percentages

The classic burger is 54% of the weekly increase, and the classic and the double together are 81%. Those are the two prices worth deciding on first. The kids' burger and the chili cheese fries together add about $15 a week, so they can wait for your next scheduled menu update.

The percentage column tells a different story. The chili cup is third in dollars, but it's the only item that moved above the owner's 30% food cost target. Whether that matters is your call. A 30.8% cup of chili that brings people in may be fine. But now you're making that choice on purpose.

For deciding the new burger price itself, including how many sales you can lose before a price increase stops paying for itself, see how much to raise your burger price when ground beef jumps.

Pass 2: explain the table and draft options

Paste the finished spreadsheet back in, and keep the assistant to the numbers you give it.

Here is my finished re-costing table. Use only these numbers. Do not recalculate them or add new figures.

1. In plain language, summarize which items carry most of the weekly cost increase and which items moved above my [TARGET]% food cost target.
2. For the top two items by weekly dollars, list the options I could consider: a price change, a portion change, a substitute ingredient, or leaving the price alone. For each, say which number in the table it depends on.
3. List anything in the table that looks inconsistent, like an item whose food cost moved more or less than its beef content would suggest.

Do not recommend a specific price. I will decide prices myself.

If the reply includes a number that isn't in your table, don't use it. Treat it as a sign the assistant is guessing, and ask it to point to the row it came from.

Check the list against what you actually use

Add up the raw beef per week from the table: 483.1 pounds. Compare that with the beef you actually used, not just what you bought. Purchases aren't usage: if more beef is in the walk-in at the end of the week than at the start, some of what you bought is still on the shelf. For the same week the table covers, take beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory, and adjust for any transfers or returns. A change in stock isn't a recipe gap. In the fictional example, say that count shows the counter used 500 pounds. Then 16.9 pounds (3.4%) aren't explained by the recipes. That could be trim, staff meals, a special that isn't on the cards, a sub-recipe the list missed, heavy portioning or a counting error. Don't assume which, and don't assume theft or waste. A gap like that is the place to start an item-level check, and using AI to check an inventory variance one item at a time covers that workflow.

If the gap is large, the list is probably missing something. Run pass 1 again with the recipe cards for specials and catering.

What goes wrong, and how to recover

• The assistant does math anyway. Ignore the numbers, paste your table and ask again for the list only.
• It fills in a missing quantity. If a row has an amount that isn't on the card, don't use it. Delete it or mark it "not stated," and ask the assistant which card it came from. Never copy the assistant's number onto a card. If the card really is missing the amount or looks out of date, weigh a few real portions or check with whoever is responsible for the recipe, then update the card with that verified amount.
• Raw and cooked get mixed. Anything marked "not stated" needs a real yield before it goes in the spreadsheet.
• The recipe cards are out of date. The list is only as good as the cards. If the line cooks use more or less than the card says, the cost is wrong either way. Weigh a few portions on a normal shift.
• Two items share a name. "Chili" on a card might mean the chili cup or the chili sub-recipe. Ask the assistant to list them separately.

Keep the work

Save the checked list and the spreadsheet with the date and the invoice price you used. Next time beef or any other ingredient moves, update one cell and the table redoes itself. You won't need to rebuild the list unless the menu changed.

For costing a single recipe from scratch, including yield, use the restaurant food cost calculator. If your supplier invoices are what's slowing you down, how to use AI to read restaurant invoices covers pulling prices off them.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average price data, ground beef, 100% beef, per pound, U.S. city average (series APU0000703112), August 2026: BLS data series
• USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, Summary Findings, updated September 25, 2026: ERS summary findings