How Kusina Collective cut food costs by 18% without touching a signature dish.

The challenge

Growth was hiding a margin leak.

Kusina Collective grew from 4 to 14 restaurants in three years. Sales were up 260%, but profit barely moved. Each outlet ordered its own ingredients, chefs prepped "by feel", and the menu hadn't been re-priced since 2022, when rice, pork and cooking oil were all cheaper.

The founders knew money was leaking somewhere. They just couldn't see where, because the numbers arrived six weeks after the month ended.

• 14 different supplier listsNo volume pricing and no standard specs for core ingredients.
• Food cost at 38.6% of salesIndustry benchmark for their format is 30–32%.
• Menu of 92 items23 dishes sold fewer than 5 plates a day per outlet.
• Six-week reporting lagManagers couldn't act on last week's problems.

Our approach

Fix the system, then let the chefs cook.

We spent the first two weeks in kitchens, not meeting rooms: weighing waste bins, timing prep and interviewing 38 staff. Then we worked phase by phase with the operations team.

1. 01
   Weeks 1–2 · Diagnose

   Find the leak

   Recipe costing for all 92 dishes, waste audits in 4 pilot outlets and a supplier price benchmark. We found ₱52M a year in addressable cost.

2. 02
   Weeks 3–6 · Design

   Menu engineering & central purchasing

   Trimmed the menu to 64 items, re-priced 31 dishes by contribution margin and moved 80% of spend to 6 preferred suppliers on quarterly contracts.

3. 03
   Weeks 7–14 · Deliver

   Daily prep system & live dashboard

   Introduced par-level prep sheets driven by POS forecasts and a daily food-cost dashboard every manager checks before service.

Results

Six months later, the numbers held.

Comparing the six months before rollout with the six months after, across all 14 outlets:

What made it work

Four lessons for growing restaurant groups

• Start in the kitchenTwo weeks of observation found more savings than two months of spreadsheets would have.
• Price by margin, not by gutPopular, low-margin dishes were quietly subsidising the menu.
• Make the number dailyA daily dashboard turned food cost from an accounting metric into a kitchen habit.
• Protect what guests loveEvery signature recipe stayed exactly the same. Guests noticed nothing, except shorter waits.