Skip to main content

AI Prompt Ideas for Actionable Insights

Jenny Vaughn
Updated

We’ve compiled this prompt library to give you ideas on questions you can use AI to ask to get better insight into your restaurant. 

They are organized by restaurant roles and within that, you can look at them by level of urgency from things that need action today to longer-range, exploratory questions.

Immediate Action Needed:
Time-sensitive issues that can directly hit your bottom line or block a process if left alone.

Monitor Closely:
Track trends and changes you'll want to keep an eye on before they snowball into bigger problems.

Strategic Review:
Dig into performance, margins and spend patterns that shape your bigger financial decisions.

Exploratory / Advisory:
Open the door to ideas, benchmarks and what-if scenarios that help you plan ahead.

Article Contents 

🏠 Owners

Immediate action needed

  • "What's my outstanding payables balance right now, and how does that compare to this time last month?"

Monitor closely

  • "Show me my top 5 cost categories as a percentage of sales this month — which ones are trending in the wrong direction?"
  • "Which menu items give me the best margin per dollar of food cost, and how can I push more of them?"
  • "What's my projected cash outflow for bills over the next 30 days based on what's already in the system?"
  • "Which sales category — food, beer, wine, liquor, or NA beverages — is growing fastest right now?"
  • "What's the sales trend for this location over the last 6 months?"
  • "Pull the P&L for this location for last month — what's my gross profit and controllable profit?"

Strategic review

  • "What was my prime cost percentage last period, and how does it compare to the same period last year?"
  • "How much am I spending with each vendor this year, and where do I have an opportunity to consolidate or renegotiate?"
  • "Summarize my business performance this quarter in 5 bullet points — the good, the bad, and what I should act on."
  • "What are my three biggest opportunities to improve profitability this month without changing my menu?"
  • "Show me my year-over-year cost trends for food, beverage, and labor as a percentage of revenue."
  • "Which vendors deliver the most consistent pricing, and which ones surprise me with changes from order to order?"
  • "Compare sales this month to the same month last year."
  • "Across every unit I operate, compare prime cost — who's running leanest, and who needs attention?"
  • "What's driving the change in controllable profit versus last quarter?"
  • "Roll up total spend by category across every location I own."
  • "Compare food cost % across every unit in my group — who needs attention?"
  • "Which location had the strongest sales growth this year?"

Exploratory / advisory

  • "How does my food cost compare to the industry average?"
  • "If I cut my food cost by 1.5 percentage points, what would that mean in dollars to my bottom line?"
  • "List every unit in my restaurant group and how they're organized by region or concept."

🍳 Chefs

Immediate action needed

  • "Which ingredients am I at risk of running out of before my next delivery?"

Monitor closely

  • "Which frequently used products have recent price increases? How are those increases impacting recipe costs?"
  • "Am I being charged the same price for the same item across different deliveries from the same vendor?"
  • "Which of my ingredients have had the biggest price increases this quarter?"
  • "Which inventory categories have the most shrinkage this period versus my theoretical usage?"
  • "Am I wasting more than I should be? Walk me through where waste is coming from."
  • "Which of my menu items are priced below the cost threshold I should be hitting for my target food cost %?"
  • "Which of my recipes rely most heavily on ingredients that have gone up in price this quarter?"
  • "Which recipes have a plate cost percentage out of bounds right now, and by how much?"
  • "Which dish's cost has increased the most over the last 90 days?"
  • "What's the variance between our last two count sheets for a given category?"

Strategic review

  • "What is the plate cost for my top 5 selling menu items this week?"
  • "Which of my menu items has the worst contribution margin? Should I reprice, reformulate, or remove it?"
  • "What's the price history on my top proteins over the last 6 months? Which ones are most volatile?"
  • "Break down the ingredient cost of a specific recipe — which ingredient drives the most cost?"
  • "Show me the cost history for a specific recipe over the last 6 months — is it trending up or down?"
  • "Which recipe category — bar, menu, or prepared — has the highest average food cost %?"

Exploratory / advisory

  • "Can you give me ideas on how I can update my least profitable recipes to improve plate cost?"
  • "Which ingredients am I ordering most frequently in small quantities? Could I be buying in larger volumes to lower my per-unit cost?"
  • "Show me my top 10 ingredients by total spend this period — are there any I could substitute to reduce cost without impacting quality?"
  • "If I swapped one ingredient in my three most popular dishes, where would I save the most without changing the flavor?"
  • "If I moved my top five produce items to a single vendor, how would my total cost change?"
  • "What would happen to my food cost % if a key ingredient's price rose 10%?"
  • "List every recipe that uses a specific product as an ingredient, so I know what's exposed if the price spikes."

📊 Accountants

Immediate action needed

  • "Show me all invoices received this week that are still unapproved — who do I need to follow up with?"
  • "Are there any duplicate invoices in the system this month?"
  • "What's still open that I need to resolve before I can close this accounting period?"
  • "Which invoices have GL coding that differs from how that vendor was coded last period? Flag anything that looks like a miscoding."
  • "Show me all bills I've approved but haven't paid yet — are any at risk of going past due?"
  • "Which bills are due in the next seven days, and what's the total cash I need to cover them?"
  • "List all orders still pending or unapproved for this unit."

Monitor closely

  • "Are there any vendor payments this period that fall outside my usual range, anything I should double-check before it goes out?"
  • "Show me all credits and returns logged this period — are there any outstanding credits I haven't received from a vendor?"
  • "Which products have had price increases in the last 60 days? Show me the items and percentage increases."
  • "Which vendor's invoices most often include unexpected charges or credits?"
  • "Has a specific vendor's pricing on a product changed since our last order?"

Strategic review

  • "Give me a summary of all accruals I should be recording this period based on invoices received but not yet posted."
  • "Show me all transactions coded to 'miscellaneous' or catch-all accounts this period — I want to recode anything that's been dumped there."
  • "What is my total spend by vendor category (produce, protein, dairy, beverage) this period versus last period?"
  • "What did I spend with each vendor last month, ranked highest to lowest?"
  • "Give me a vendor spend summary by category for last month."
  • "List all my spend categories with their accounting codes — anything miscategorized?"
  • "Show me the full product catalog for this unit, including latest price and category mapping, so I can check for duplicates or mapping errors."

Exploratory / advisory

  • "Which vendors haven't sent an order in over 60 days — are we still using them?"
  • "Show me the packaging options a vendor offers for an item so I can compare true unit cost."

🏢 Directors of Ops / GMs

Immediate action needed

  • "Give me a daily flash report — yesterday's sales, food cost %, and any purchases that look out of line."

Monitor closely

  • "Which recipes have plate costs that have drifted furthest from my targets since I last updated them?"
  • "How often does each vendor short me on an order, and which ones have the worst fill rates this period?"
  • "What's the current inventory value for this location?"
  • "Show me the detail on our most recent count sheet — anything look off versus last count?"
  • "Which products on hand haven't been ordered recently, suggesting we're overstocked?"
  • "Which vendor items map to a specific product, and which vendor is cheapest right now?"
  • "Which products had the biggest price increase from vendors in the last quarter?"

Strategic review

  • "How many orders did we place with each vendor last period, and what was the average order value?"
  • "Show me my sales mix last period — which menu categories are growing, which are declining, and how is that affecting my overall food cost?"
  • "If I could fix only one thing this period to improve profitability, what should it be?"
  • "Which vendors am I paying most often, and could I shift to a schedule that smooths out my cash flow?"
  • "Which units belong to my restaurant group, and what grouping scheme are we using?"
  • "Which locations share vendors, and are they getting the same pricing?"
  • "Compare P&L for this unit against the group average."
  • "Which operating expense line grew the most since last quarter?"
  • "What's our labor cost as a percentage of sales this period?"
  • "Show me cost of goods sold by category for the last 3 months."

Exploratory / advisory

  • "Which inventory sections have the highest dollar value tied up right now?"
  • "Compare this month's inventory count to last month's — what moved the most?"

MCP connector-only Prompts

Tom is fast with no setup, but he only works inside of MarginEdge. 

The MCP connector opens up three things Tom can't do: pulling in other systems, running automatically on a schedule and building a dashboard you come back to.

Combining other restaurant data sources (POS, labor, banking, reservations)

  • "Pull sales by category from MarginEdge and labor hours from my scheduling tool to show labor cost as a % of sales by daypart."
  • "Compare MarginEdge's food cost % to my POS-reported menu-item sales mix to find which high-cost dishes are actually selling in volume."
  • "Cross-reference vendor invoice totals in MarginEdge with my bank or QuickBooks transactions to flag any payments that don't match an order."
  • "Combine my reservation data with MarginEdge sales reports to see if covers are converting to the revenue I'd expect."
  • "Pull weather data alongside MarginEdge daily sales to see how much of last week's sales dip was weather-driven versus a real trend."
  • "Compare payroll costs from my payroll system to MarginEdge's labor line on the P&L to make sure both systems agree before close."

Set and forget scheduled tasks

  • "Every Monday morning, pull last week's sales report by category for all my units and send me a summary of any location down more than 5% versus the prior week."
  • "Each morning, check for any vendor order in the last 24 hours where a line-item price is more than 10% above that product's price history, and alert me."
  • "On the 1st of each month, pull the prior month's P&L for every unit in my group and flag any location where controllable profit dropped."
  • "Every Friday, check which recipes have moved into 'plate cost out of bounds' status this week and send me the list before the weekend rush."
  • "Daily at close, compare that day's sales report to the same weekday last month and flag anything more than 10% off."
  • "Weekly, check for vendors with no orders in 60+ days across all units and send a reminder to review those relationships."
  • "Every Monday, pull the latest count sheet detail for each unit and flag any inventory category with unusually large swings since the prior count."

Ongoing live dashboards

  • "Build me a multi-unit dashboard showing sales, food cost %, and controllable profit by location, refreshed each time I open it."
  • "Create a vendor spend tracker — total spend by vendor and category over the trailing 12 weeks, with the biggest movers highlighted."
  • "Build a recipe cost-watch dashboard that lists every recipe with plate cost % out of bounds, sorted worst to best."
  • "Create a P&L comparison across all units in my group, side by side, so I can spot outliers at a glance."
  • "Build an inventory value tracker showing on-hand value by category over the last several count sheets, so I can watch the trend without re-asking each time."