Restaurant Purchasing and Waste Dataset
Compare food purchasing and recorded waste by outlet and ingredient category.
A practical workbook exercise for restaurant finance and area managers. Work from the underlying records, compare the relevant totals and explain how you reached your result.
About the dataset
This original synthetic dataset contains 490 source records across three related tables. The records are fictional and designed for descriptive business analysis.
Dataset details
| Industry | Restaurants and food service |
| Formats | Excel workbook and CSV files |
| Source records | 490 |
| Related tables | 3 |
| Fields across table schemas | 16 |
| Reporting cutoff | September 30, 2026 |
| Currency | USD for monetary fields |
| Source | Original synthetic data created for Jolene.pro Workbook Studies |
What's included
- Outlets: 10 records and 4 fields. One restaurant outlet.
- Purchases: 300 records and 6 fields. One ingredient purchase line.
- Waste: 180 records and 6 fields. One recorded waste event.
Recommended analysis
- Which outlets record the most kilograms of waste?
- What are purchasing costs by ingredient category?
- Which waste reasons recur?
- Why is waste divided by purchases not a true production-yield measure?
How to work with the data
Use the following relationships to connect the source tables:
- Purchases.outlet_id → Outlets.outlet_id
- Waste.outlet_id → Outlets.outlet_id
Check the row grain before joining. Aggregate repeated child records to the required level before combining totals, so parent amounts are not counted more than once.
You can explore the workbook in Excel or Jolene.pro, or use the CSV files with SQL, Power BI and other analysis tools.
Definitions and assumptions
- Waste and purchases are separate event logs; opening stock, usage and sales are not supplied.
- All quantities are kilograms. Do not infer food cost as a share of revenue or a complete stock roll-forward.
Use the field definitions and nullable-column guidance in the included data dictionary. Interpret blank values and reporting dates according to the scenario notes.
Downloads
The complete dataset ZIP includes the Excel workbook, three matching CSV files, a data dictionary, scenario notes, a source-row preview and license details.
Reuse and attribution
These are synthetic records, not customer data or industry benchmarks. Reuse is allowed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Credit Jolene.pro and identify any changes you make.