Pinpoint the Menu Items Driving Your Food Cost
Food is your biggest controllable expense — and roughly two-thirds of the food your operation wastes is lost after it leaves the kitchen, on the plate. CPIsight gives dining directors continuous plate waste data — by item, shift, and service — without adding to your team's workload.
Book a Demo
The challenges you face every day
Food cost is your biggest controllable expense, but the biggest source of loss is the one you can't see.
Hidden food costs
Your biggest controllable expense is food — and the biggest source of loss is what diners leave on the plate. Most tracking solutions focus on the kitchen and miss it entirely.
Manual audits are disruptive
Tray studies and manual waste audits burden your staff, produce infrequent snapshots, and rarely lead to lasting change.
Tracking without insight
Most solutions give you raw waste numbers but not the deep analytics to know why it's happening or what to change. Without actionable insight, data alone doesn't cut costs.
How CPIsight helps dining directors
Deep analytics and actionable data on plate waste — without adding to your team's workload.
Install
Camera system mounts at dish return in under a day. No construction, no IT integration, no staff training required.
Track
Computer vision automatically identifies and logs what's wasted, when, and how much. Every meal, every day.
Act
Real-time dashboard delivers consumer insights on which menu items drive waste. Adjust menus and portions based on actual consumption data.
Results that impact your bottom line
When you can see what's wasted, you can fix it. Research shows that systematic plate waste tracking delivers measurable cost savings.
Sources: 66% — Costello et al., 2015. 2-8% — no research source; a category benchmark claimed across waste-analytics platforms. Remaining figures describe CPIsight capabilities.
99.9% uptime and zero disruption to service. The data from our Seneca Valley Phase 1 pilot identified a starch item consistently coming back uneaten — that single insight led to a menu swap we're now tracking in Phase 2.
CPIsight brings continuous plate-level visibility to dining operations — not periodic audits, not estimates.
From the blog
Food Waste
5 Data-Driven Menu Changes That Reduce Plate Waste
Practical menu engineering strategies that plate waste data can inform — from portion right-sizing to feedback-driven specials.
Industry
Food Waste in Institutional Dining: Key Statistics Every Operator Should Know
Sourced food waste numbers for institutional dining: national totals, foodservice landfill data, campus and hospital plate-waste studies, and their limits.
Operations
Food Waste Tracking Methods Compared: From Clipboards to Computer Vision
Manual logs, smart scales and camera systems compared for dining operations, plus the questions to ask any plate-waste tracking vendor before you buy.
Explore Related Solutions
See how CPIsight serves other segments of institutional dining.
Ready to see where your food budget actually goes?
Food costs continue to rise. Every year without plate-level visibility compounds the loss. Start with a pilot and see exactly what is leaving on the tray within weeks.