Butchering and Usable Trim

Hi Joe,
Just a quick question we are having a debate about at out businesses.

We bring in our own whole sirloins of beef, trim them, and cut and portion them to our specs typically for sirloin steaks in a variety of portions 8 oz. and 10 oz. cuts.

So we have 3 items resulting from that process:
1. A usable salable product in the form of cut and portioned sirloin steaks as mentioned above.
2. We get actual waste that does not go into anything other than soups, stocks, reductions etc…
3. And we have a considerable amount of usable trim that we can manipulate into another food form and generate revenue with, i.e. burgers, chop steak, etc.

My question is we have a considerable amount of this usable salable trim in our freezer. The question is how we account for it in our inventory. At the price/ lb we paid for it upon delivery, a factored price after we it is trimmed and in the ready to use format in the freezer waiting to be utilized (essentially the same costing formula applied to the steaks we are portioning for immediate sale) or at a cost reduced price as it is no longer a part of the original piece of meat we would be using to generate sales with in the immediate as we do with the portioned steaks.

Your wealth of knowledge and assistance here would be greatly appreciated!! Get back if you can.

Kindest Regards,
Ross Munro

There are two schools of thought on this issue Ross. The first group charges the cost of the whole sirloin to the steaks. They consider all usable trim "free" and they use the total weight of steaks divided into the purchase cost of the whole sirloin to calculate the cost per usable pound. This philosophy is correct if the trim is used in employee meals, stock pots, etc.

The second school of thought credits the cost of usable trim. Typically, there are two primary trim bi-products: ground beef and stew meat. These people weigh the ground meat and cost the credit using the prevailing cost per pound for ground beef. They do the same for the stew meat. The net cost is then divided by the weight of the steaks to get a cost per usable pound.

I prefer the second method if the restaurant serves burgers, meatballs, meatloaf and entrees which utilize the stew meat. The bones may also be credited if you genuinely gain revenue from their use. If the chef had to buy beef bones for base menu items and did not need to purchase as many due to the butchering process, you can go ahead and follow suit with the bones.