Cut Waste and Nail Your Daily Prep with AI
The free guide covers the general method: pull sales history, find what gets thrown away, prep to demand. This one is the cafe version. Cafe waste has specific shapes — the half-gallon of oat milk dumped at close, the batch of drip that sat past its hold time, the six croissants left in the case on a Tuesday, the cold brew you steeped for a Saturday that turned out rainy. Each has its own fix, and the fixes are par levels by daypart, prep sheets by weekday, and a log that takes the closer under a minute. This guide builds all of that so your opener walks in to numbers, not guesses.
What You’ll Get
- Par levels for pastries, milk, batch brew, and cold brew broken out by daypart (open, mid-morning, afternoon, close)
- Seven one-page prep sheets, one per weekday, that an opener can follow without asking
- A milk and pastry waste log the closer fills in 60 seconds
- A batch-brew and cold-brew timing plan sized to each weekday
- A Monday par-adjustment habit that keeps prep tuned as seasons and traffic shift
Step-by-Step Guide
Set par levels by daypart
A single daily number is too blunt for a cafe. The croissant that sells at 7:30 and the one that sells at 3pm are different problems — set pars for each daypart.
Data you need
Export 4–8 weeks of item sales by hour from your POS (Square: Reports → Item Sales, filter by hour; Toast: Sales Summary by hour). If hourly isn't available, split daily sales by your gut sense of morning vs. afternoon share for now and correct it in Step 5.
I want par levels by daypart for my coffee shop. My dayparts: [e.g. open–9am / 9am–noon / noon–3pm / 3pm–close] My tracked items: - Pastries: [LIST — croissant, muffin, scone, cookie, etc.] - Milk: [whole / 2% / oat / almond / soy — gallons or cartons on hand] - Batch brew: [pot or airpot size, how many you brew per batch] - Cold brew: [batch size in gallons, steep time, how it's held] - Grab-and-go food: [sandwiches, yogurt, etc., if any] My item sales by hour for the last 4–8 weeks, by day of week: [PASTE EXPORT OR SUMMARY] Please build: 1. **A par table** — for each item, the quantity that should be ready at the start of each daypart, for each day of the week (Monday through Sunday) 2. **A sellout tolerance per item** — which items should run out by close (pastries, batch brew) vs. which should never run out (milk, espresso) 3. **A last-bake / last-batch time** — the daypart after which we stop replenishing each item, because anything made later ends up in the bin 4. **A milk pull rule** — how many gallons of each type to pull from the walk-in at open and at the mid-morning restock, so we're not opening a gallon of oat at 4pm 5. **Which pars are weather-sensitive** — cold brew and iced drinks on hot days, batch brew and hot food on cold ones — with a plus/minus rule 6. **Format**: one table, item rows, daypart columns, one tab per weekday, so I can drop it straight into Google Sheets
Write a prep sheet for each weekday
Pars tell you how much. A prep sheet tells the opener what to do first, second, and third at 5:45am so it's all ready by the first customer.
I want seven one-page prep sheets, one per weekday, built from my par table. My par table by daypart: [PASTE FROM STEP 1] My opening time: [TIME] — first customer usually at [TIME] Opener arrives at: [TIME]; second person arrives at: [TIME] My equipment: [espresso machine warm-up time, batch brewer, cold brew setup, pastry case, oven or warmer if any] My pastry supply: [baked in-house / delivered daily at TIME / delivered 2–3x week] For each day (Monday through Sunday) please write: 1. **A timed checklist from opener arrival to first customer** — machine on, first batch brew, pastry case fill to par, milk pull, syrups, cold brew tap check — in the order that avoids waiting on equipment 2. **Daypart restock lines** — "9am: bring pastry case back to mid-morning par; brew batch #3; pull 2 gal oat" — with the numbers from the par table already filled in 3. **The last-bake / last-batch cutoff** written as a rule the afternoon shift can't miss 4. **A close-out line** — what gets counted, what gets logged, what gets dumped, what gets held for tomorrow (and for how long) 5. **A weather line at the top** — "if forecast over [TEMP]: +1 cold brew batch, -1 batch brew after noon" — with my specific numbers 6. **Format**: fits on one printed page in large type, checkboxes, no paragraphs — this is read standing up
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