How does a restaurant know how much food to make each day?

Question

I watch random food shows like “Food Paradise” on Travel channel, and “Triple D” by the Mayor of FlavorTown himself. When they speak to the owner/cook, they say things like “oh we cook 400 lbs of BBQ a day” or “about 3000 pancakes each day” or whatever. How do they know that’s what they will use? Seems like a guessing game.

In: Other

Answer 1

With experience you get to know how much to make. They don’t always get it right, running out of something or having wastage at the end of the night is part of a normal restaurant operations.

The well run locations will have less wastage.