Most new dining rooms lose money on the first purchase, not on the last customer

You can run a full room every evening for a year and still close, and the reason is almost always on the buying side rather than the selling side. Nobody notices, because the bill arrives in small pieces.

A restaurant buying badly pays somewhere between eight and twenty percent more than one buying well for exactly the same food. On a modest dining room that is the difference between a wage and no wage.

The reason is not that wholesalers are dishonest. It is that a new buyer does not know what a thing costs this week, cannot tell a seasonal rise from an opportunistic one, and has no record of what they paid last month.

This book is the record and the reference. It tells you what the twelve things you buy most actually cost across a year, what moves them, and what to say when a price moves for no visible reason.

It also tells you when paying more is correct, which is the part most purchasing advice leaves out. A cheaper box of tomatoes that throws away a third of itself is not cheaper.

It is written for one person: someone who has signed a lease, has eight weeks before opening, and has never bought food in quantity. If that is not you, the price sheets may still be worth the money, but the first forty pages will not tell you anything new.

One payment, thirty days to change your mind, and no subscription of any kind.