The gap between what you bought and what you sold.
Inventory variance is the difference between theoretical stock usage (based on recipes and sales) and actual stock on hand. A widening gap usually points to waste, portioning drift, or unrecorded loss.
Why variance is hard to see without recipe-based tracking
A till that only records revenue has no way to know how much of an ingredient a sold dish should have used. Recipe-based inventory links each menu item to its ingredients, so a sale automatically deducts expected stock — giving you a theoretical baseline to compare against physical counts.
What Vyfoo provides
- Recipe-linked stock deduction, where recipes are configured
- Stock monitoring across ingredients
- Waste and variance workflows, where enabled
The accuracy of variance reporting depends on how completely recipes and portion sizes are configured — it isn't automatic without that setup work.