## The Problem
Marco DiFrancesco had run Salvatore's Italian Kitchen in Cleveland for eleven years. He knew his food costs were 'somewhere around 30%'—at least, that's what his accountant told him once a year. But when his landlord raised rent 15%, he needed to understand his numbers in real time.
"I was spending 6 hours every Sunday doing recipe costing in spreadsheets," Marco told us. "It was killing my Sundays. And I was probably getting it wrong half the time."
His biggest seller? The lasagna. Every table seemed to order it. But Marco had a gut feeling something was off—he just couldn't prove it without manual labor he didn't have time for.
## The Approach
Marco signed up for Menu Profit Analyzer in January. The first thing he did was upload 3 months of invoices—the tool parsed them automatically, so he didn't have to manually enter a single ingredient.
Within the first week, the dashboard surfaced a finding that stopped him cold: his lasagna was selling 23% of entrees but generating only 11% of plate profit. The reason? He was using a premium imported ricotta that cost 3x the local brand, while competitors charged the same menu price.
## The Outcome
After 8 weeks, Marco made two changes:
1. **Substituted the imported ricotta** for a local equivalent (saving $2.84 per pan) 2. **Raised lasagna price by $2** (customers didn't notice; margins improved)
Combined effect: food costs dropped from 31% to 25%. Marco estimates he's saving $1,340 per month on food costs alone—$16,080 annually. He also stopped spending his Sundays on spreadsheets.
"I thought I knew my business," Marco says. "Turns out I only knew half of it. The other half was sitting in my invoices, waiting for someone to actually look at them."
**Months active:** 6 **Total savings documented:** $8,040 **Hours reclaimed weekly:** 6