Impact Kitchen’s Recipe for Reduced COGS and Scalable Success

Overview: Impact Kitchen

Impact Kitchen has built a loyal following by doing things differently. Their 100% gluten-free kitchen serves up minimally processed, nutrient-dense meals that fuel their customers, from morning smoothies to afternoon power bowls.  

Behind the scenes, that commitment to quality requires serious operational precision – and that’s where COGS-Well comes in. With seven locations in Toronto, two commissaries, and an expansion to New York underway, Director of Operations Emir Aydin and Finance & Accounting Manager Linda Liu knew they needed better tools to scale.   

Today, they use a full suite of COGS-Well features, including inventory counts, recipe management, ordering, transfers, tracking waste, determining variances, and integrations with their vendors and NetSuite accounting.  

Time-Saving Inventory Count Features 

Before switching to COGS-Well, the operations and finance teams spent hours tracking and managing their inventory, trying to utilize a system that was not designed for multiple locations.  Restaurant managers are benefiting from a significant amount of time back in their day. 

“Using features like counting inventory in COGS-Well is saving our restaurant managers eight hours a week,” said Emir. “That's 20% of their time every week that they can invest back into the business. Being able to switch from weekly inventory counts to periodic inventory counts has been an insane time saver.” 

"Using features like counting inventory in COGS-Well is saving our restaurant managers eight hours a week."

The finance team is feeling the impact, too. 

“Our old inventory system did not have a General Ledger export, so the ending inventory adjustments were entered manually. Due to the COGS-Well export to NetSuite, we save an hour per week, our reporting is much more timely, and our accuracy is improved, " said Linda Liu, Director of Finance and Accounting, Impact Kitchen. 

The Impact Kitchen team also set up storage locations in COGS-Well to systemize their process even further: 

“It's significantly more intuitive than our last inventory system,” Emir said. “We used to have to go back and manually add the same inventory item in each location together. COGS-Well does the math for us.”

Reduced COGS and Enhanced Reports 

When you have tools to closely track and manage your operations, you can make better decisions. For Impact Kitchen, the shift to COGS-Well has led to measurable improvements.

“After switching to COGS-Well, we reduced our COGS by 1% to 1.5%. It was a significant change,” said Linda. “One of the reasons is that COGS-Well is much more cohesive and robust with better reporting than our old system.”

“I can channel my energy to the stores that actually need strategic help,” said Emir. "We identify opportunities around inventory, waste, or invoice entry issues that happened throughout the period and fix whatever we can.”  

Suggested Ordering for Optimal Inventory Levels 

Impact Kitchen uses COGS-Well to suggest the items and quantities they need when placing orders with many of their vendors. They include a usage projection for each item, which adds to the suggested order quantity to cover projected usage before the delivery is made.  

“Some items we order have a high food cost and short shelf life,” said Emir. “We need to order just enough, but not too much, and the system helps us do that. If you boost your orders too much, you waste because of their low shelf life. But you don't want to fall short either, because it is a high-ticket item.” 

Seamless Transfers and Commissary Management 

The Impact Kitchen stores use COGS-Well to make and fulfill transfer requests. After completion, cost adjustments are automatically calculated, and adjustments are posted to their NetSuite General Ledger.  

“Our commissary kitchen supplies a lot of products to our restaurants. We can request and fulfill transfers to and from the commissary and between our stores with COGS-Well,” Emir explained. “We can also place orders to the commissary as if it were a standalone supplier.”  

According to Linda, the finance team is also saving 3-4 hours through automatic transfer adjustments to the general ledger. 

“We used to produce separate invoices for our commissary, then, on the restaurant side, create a bill for each one. It was taking up a lot of time,” said Linda. “With COGS-Well’s transfer features, instead of doing 20 entries, it's literally the push of a button, and it pushes everything through.” 

Taking Control of Waste 

Impact Kitchen uses COGS-Well to track waste at each restaurant, and their numbers are getting stronger by the day.

“Our waste numbers were really high when we first switched to COGS-Well,” Emir said. “The system has made it easy for us to track it, identify where the opportunities for improvement are, and clean it up. We also love how you can include or exclude waste on the usage variance reports.” 

Emir also shared how COGS-Well has supported the team in setting measurable goals. 

 “We asked COGS-Well to show our waste cost as a percentage of sales in addition to dollars because each store has different sales volumes. Now we can set a consistent percentage target for all our locations.”

Strategic Menu Decisions 

Impact Kitchen has always valued menu engineering – the practice of analyzing the profitability and popularity of menu items to guide decisions about pricing and marketability. But before COGS-Well, it was manual, time-consuming, and at risk of being inaccurate.

“Since day one, we have been using the menu engineering reports every quarter,” Emir said. “Before COG-Well, we had to handle this internally with a spreadsheet we created, but there was a lot of labor required to maintain it, and it was prone to errors.” 

“We were always questioning the data integrity of the menu engineering reports that we did manually,” he continued. “COGS-Well solved that problem for us.”  

They're also expanding the way they look at menu items and actively exploring their prep and labor costs. 

“Our culinary team is starting to look at the manpower it takes to make our menu items,” said Linda. “It's a piece of the puzzle that will enhance our reporting and home in on our efficiency.”  

Tracking and Managing Variances 

Impact Kitchen uses COGS-Well to track variances for inventory usage and costs.  Actual inventory costs and usage are compared to theoretical (what the costs and usage should have been based on sales, recipes, and item costs) to isolate variances.

“Our finance team has been able to look at inventory variances for all our restaurants based on the invoices coming in and reach out when something is off,” Linda said. “We can see anything that might skew the reporting.”  

“We identify opportunities around inventory, waste, or invoice entry issues that happened throughout the period and fix whatever we can,” Emir added. “Then, we pick five to ten inventory items from each store to focus on.”  

That collaboration leads to deeper insights – and fewer surprises at the end of a period.  

Using Reports Books to Increase Efficiency 

Report Books eliminate the need for COGS-Well users to run a single or a set of reports manually. Users can also send these reports to specific people or groups automatically. 

“We use Report Books very, very actively. Especially for me, as a Director of Operations,” said Emir. “I have seven restaurants and a million different data points, so automating the creation and delivery of reports is a huge time saver.” 

Impact Kitchen distributes reports for inventory extensions, orders, transfers, sales, waste, and usage variance.

Responsive Support for a Fast-Moving Team  

Both Emir and Linda emphasized how important it’s been to have COGS-Well as a partner they can count on, especially as they grow.  

“The support team is fantastic,” said Linda. “Any time we have an issue, we send an email, and the turnaround is phenomenal. They're quick to jump on anything we need help with.”  

“Anybody that we have connected with at COG-Well so far has been extremely helpful,” Emir added. “We know that we can continue to lean on them, which is a great feeling. It's important for us to have this kind of relationship with our partners.”  

Conclusion  

With continued expansion in the works, Impact Kitchen isn’t slowing down. And thanks to COGS-Well, they’re scaling with confidence. From lower COGS and cleaner reporting to easier inventory and recipe management, Emir, Linda, and their team have the tools they need to stay in control and save their managers time every step of the way.