specials-board

---
name: specials-board
description: Turns a stock count of what is in your fridges into tomorrow's special, costed, priced, allergen-listed and written for the board and the floor. Use when you have food with a date on it and no plan for it.
---

# Tomorrow's special, built out of what is already in the fridge

You give this a walk round your fridges, freezer and dry store with the dates read off the packs, plus tomorrow's rota and what you paid for the stock. You get back one or two specials built from the food with the shortest life left in it, each costed per portion, priced, written for the board in words a customer will read, with the allergens listed and a short brief for whoever is on the floor. It never builds a dish around food you do not have, and never puts anything on a board that is past a use-by date.

## What it does

1. **Count what is actually in the building before inventing a single dish.** Walk the walk-in, every under-counter fridge, the freezer and the dry store, and write down each item you could plausibly cook with: what it is, how much is there in kilos, litres or units, the date printed on the pack, whether that date is a use-by or a best-before, and which fridge it is in. Photograph the labels rather than trusting your memory, because the whole exercise turns on dates being right. Include the things nobody counts: half a tub of cream, the end of a brisket, four trays of mushrooms, the egg whites left from a pastry job, the herbs that will be black by Thursday. Then sort by date, soonest first. No ingredient may appear in a special unless it appears on this list with a quantity attached.

2. **Split the list into must move tomorrow, this week, and stable, and treat the two date types differently.** A use-by date is a safety date and the line is hard. A best-before date is a quality date. WRAP's Surplus Food Redistribution Guidance, which "covers manufacturing, retail, hospitality and food service businesses, and all types of redistribution organisations", exists precisely because the two get confused and good food gets binned while risky food gets served. Put every use-by item dated tomorrow or the day after into "must move tomorrow". Put best-before items into "this week" and judge them on how they look and smell, with the judgement written down and signed. Anything past its use-by does not go on the list, the board, a staff meal or a stock pot. It is a waste line, recorded as one so the number stays visible.

3. **Pick the special around the shortest life and the biggest money, not the most interesting ingredient.** Score each "must move tomorrow" item on two things: days left, and how much cash is sitting in it at what you paid. Six kilos of lamb shoulder at £9.40 a kilo outranks two kilos of courgettes at £1.80 a kilo every time, even though the courgettes are the more obvious special. Build one main special around the highest-scoring item, and a second only if there is genuinely a second item in trouble. Two is the working limit for a kitchen that also has a menu to cook. Attach supporting ingredients from the same sorted list wherever you can, so one dish clears three problems instead of one, and name in the output exactly which stock lines the dish clears and how much of each it uses.

4. **Prove it can be cooked tomorrow, by the people who are actually on.** Read tomorrow's rota before the dish is fixed. Ask three questions and answer them in writing: is the section that would cook this already the busiest one at eight o'clock, is there oven, hob, fryer or pass space at the times orders will land, and can the prep be done in the hours available before service. A twelve-hour braise decided at four in the afternoon is not a special, it is Thursday's special. If the chef who can execute it is off, simplify the dish or move it to the day they are in. Write the prep list with a start time and a named person against each job, and the total prep minutes, so the labour cost is visible before committing rather than at seven o'clock when it is too late to change.

5. **Cost it on what you actually paid, per portion, with the yield taken off.** Take the invoice price for each component, not a list price and not last year's price, and divide by the base unit: per kilogram, per litre or per item. Then apply the yield you really get after trimming, peeling, bones and cooking loss, and cost the portion on the yielded weight. A shoulder bought at £9.40 a kilo that yields 62 per cent after bone and trim costs £15.16 a kilo on the plate. Add every component: protein, starch, vegetable, sauce, oil, garnish, and the bread if bread goes with it. State the cost per portion in pounds and pence and how many portions the stock on hand will actually produce. If it makes eleven, the board says eleven portions, not "while stocks last".

6. **Set a price, and show that price everywhere the dish is offered.** Price the dish against the same gross profit target as the rest of your menu, then check it against the neighbouring items, because a special priced three pounds above your most expensive main will not sell however good it is. Show the price including VAT, in figures, on the board, on the till button and in the floor brief, and make sure all three say the same number. A special with no price on the board is the most common complaint there is, and it puts the whole conversation on the server. A smaller or starter size is a separate line with its own price and portion count, not a verbal arrangement.

7. **Write the allergen line before you write the description.** Go through every component including the oil it is fried in, the stock, the marinade, the sauce, the dressing, the garnish and the bread on the side, and read the allergens off the supplier specification rather than off the dish name. The 14 you must declare are, in the official wording, "celery, cereals containing gluten (such as wheat, rye, barley, and oats), crustaceans (such as prawns, crabs and lobsters), eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs (such as mussels and oysters), mustard, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphur dioxide and sulphites (if the sulphur dioxide and sulphites are at a concentration of more than ten parts per million), tree nuts (such as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios and macadamia nuts)". For loose food you may give "full written allergen information on a menu, chalkboard or in an information pack", or give it "verbally, with a written notice placed in a clearly visible position explaining how your customers can obtain this information". The same guidance says "written allergen information, supported by a conversation, works best for consumers", and warns that allergen information must be "included in recipes or explanations of the dishes provided - you need to consider the impact when recipes change". A special is a recipe change every single day, which is why this step comes before the pretty writing.

8. **Write the board in the customer's words, and the brief in the kitchen's.** The board gets a dish name, six to twelve words naming the two things that make it worth ordering, the price, and where the allergen information is. Say what it is and where it is from: "Herefordshire lamb shoulder, slow cooked, white beans, salsa verde" beats "Chef's lamb special". Do not write a claim you cannot evidence, so no "local" without a named supplier, no "homemade" for something that arrived in a box, no "fresh" for something defrosted. Then the floor brief, separately: the dish, the price, the portion count, the allergens, what it is cooked in, what it comes with, one line on how to describe it, one line on what to offer when it runs out. Hand it out before service, not during it.

9. **Record what happened, so tomorrow's decision is better than today's.** At the end of service write three numbers against the special: portions sold, what time it ran out or how many were left, and how much of the stock it was meant to clear actually got cleared. Add one line on why. A special that sold out by half past eight was underpriced or under-produced. One that left four portions was priced too high, described badly, or never mentioned by the floor. Keep it as a running list: after three weeks it tells you which ingredients your customers actually buy as a special and which ones you are talking yourself into. Carry unsold portions back into tomorrow's stock count as a dated line, or record them as waste, and never as neither.

## Then it checks

1. Every ingredient named in a special appears on the stock count from step 1 with a quantity and a date, and the quantity on hand covers the portions printed on the board.
2. No component has a use-by date earlier than the day it will be served, and nothing past its use-by appears anywhere in the output, including stock, staff food or garnish.
3. Every special carries an allergen line covering all 14 allergens across every component including oil, stock, sauce, garnish and bread, each entry naming the supplier specification it came from.
4. Each special shows a price in pounds and pence including VAT, and that figure appears identically in the board text, the till line and the floor brief.
5. The arithmetic reconciles: cost per portion multiplied by portion count equals the total cost of stock committed, and the portion count is achievable from the yielded weight, not the bought weight.
6. The prep list names a person and a start time for every job, and the total prep minutes fit inside the hours available on tomorrow's rota before service.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never build a special to use up food past its use-by date, and never let clearing stock be the reason given in anything a customer sees. The use-by line is the one date that is not a judgement call, and a special is not a way around it.
- Never write an allergen entry from the dish name or from what you remember the recipe being. Specials change daily and the allergen information has to change with them, which is exactly the failure the official guidance warns about when it says to consider the impact when recipes change.
- Never put a claim on the board you cannot evidence tonight: no farm name without an invoice showing it, no "fresh" for something defrosted, no "gluten free" or "vegan" unless the dish has been checked against those rules properly.
- Never leave a special unpriced, and never let the board, the till and the floor carry three different prices. The customer sees one of them, and it will be the one that causes the argument.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's head chef and their environmental health officer to check before it is used. It reads a stock count and states arithmetic; it is not food safety advice, it does not replace your HACCP or Safer Food Better Business records, and nothing in it is a ruling on whether a particular piece of food is safe to serve.

## Built from
- Department of Health and Social Care and Food Standards Agency, "Allergen guidance for food businesses", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/allergen-guidance-for-food-businesses/allergen-guidance-for-food-businesses, published 2 April 2020 and updated 17 July 2026, read 14 September 2026: the verbatim list of the 14 allergens and the two lawful ways of giving allergen information for loose food, plus the warning about recipe changes, which is why step 7 runs before the description is written.
- Food Standards Agency, "How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely, published 18 December 2017, read 14 September 2026: the use-by date as the hard line, including that you "can freeze food right up until midnight on the 'use by' date printed on the label" and that defrosted food should be used "within 24 hours after it's been fully defrosted". This set step 2 and check 2.
- WRAP, "Surplus Food Redistribution Guidance", https://www.wrap.ngo/resources/guide/surplus-food-redistribution-guidance, page dated 9 December 2024, guidance updated November 2024, read 14 September 2026: the confirmation that it "covers manufacturing, retail, hospitality and food service businesses", and the separation of date decisions from quality judgements, which is the split in step 2.
- prompts.chat, formerly Awesome ChatGPT Prompts, https://api.github.com/repos/f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts, 170,307 stars read from api.github.com on 14 September 2026: the widely copied Chef and Restaurant Owner prompts, the shape this skill deliberately avoids because they generate dishes from an idea rather than a stock count.

# specials-board

## You are given
A folder from a UK restaurant, pub, cafe, bar or hotel containing any of: the stock count walked that day across the walk-in, every under-counter fridge, the freezer and the dry store (a photographed sheet, a CSV or a typed list) with the quantity and the date read off each pack, photographs of the labels, supplier invoices or a purchase price file, yield figures from trimming and cooking loss, supplier allergen specification sheets, tomorrow's rota, the house gross profit target, and the current menu with its prices.

The folder also contains a decisions file written by the head chef or by Claude naming the one or two specials to be built: the dish name, the components from the stock count each one uses, the quantity of each per portion, the price, and the prep jobs with a named person and a start time against each. Codex costs and writes up the specials named in that file. It does not design a dish, choose an ingredient or set a price.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `stock-count.csv` with columns in this order: `item_id`, `item`, `location`, `quantity`, `unit`, `date_on_pack`, `date_type`, `days_left`, `label_photo_file`, `purchase_price_per_unit_gbp`, `invoice_number`, `invoice_date`, `stock_value_gbp`, `counted_by`, `counted_on`.
   `location` is the fridge, freezer or store as written on the count. `unit` is `kg`, `l` or `each`. `date_type` is one of `use by`, `best before` or `none printed`. `days_left` is counted from the count date to the date on the pack.
2. `date-triage.csv` with columns in this order: `item_id`, `item`, `date_type`, `date_on_pack`, `days_left`, `bucket`, `quality_judgement_recorded`, `judged_by`, `judged_on`.
   `bucket` is one of `must move tomorrow`, `this week`, `stable` or `past use-by - waste line`.
3. `special-scoring.csv` with columns in this order: `item_id`, `item`, `days_left`, `quantity`, `unit`, `purchase_price_per_unit_gbp`, `stock_value_gbp`, `value_rank`, `days_rank`, `combined_score`, `selected_for`, `decisions_file_reference`.
   Only items in the `must move tomorrow` bucket are scored. `selected_for` is `special 1`, `special 2` or `not selected`, copied from the decisions file.
4. `special-costing.csv` with columns in this order: `special`, `dish_name`, `component`, `item_id`, `purchase_price_per_unit_gbp`, `invoice_number`, `invoice_date`, `yield_pct`, `yield_source`, `yielded_price_per_unit_gbp`, `quantity_per_portion`, `base_unit`, `line_cost_gbp`.
   `yielded_price_per_unit_gbp` = `purchase_price_per_unit_gbp` / (`yield_pct` / 100). Every component, including the oil, the stock, the marinade, the sauce, the dressing, the garnish and the bread on the side.
5. `special-summary.csv` with columns in this order: `special`, `dish_name`, `cost_per_portion_gbp`, `portions_available_from_stock`, `stock_committed_gbp`, `price_inc_vat_gbp`, `price_excl_vat_gbp`, `cash_gp_per_portion_gbp`, `gp_pct`, `house_gp_target_pct`, `lowest_main_price_on_menu_gbp`, `highest_main_price_on_menu_gbp`, `stock_lines_cleared`, `stock_value_cleared_gbp`, `total_prep_minutes`.
   `portions_available_from_stock` is calculated from the yielded quantity, never from the bought weight, and is the limiting component's figure.
6. `prep-list.csv` with columns in this order: `special`, `job`, `named_person`, `start_time`, `minutes`, `section`, `equipment`, `on_rota`, `rota_source`.
   `on_rota` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, read from tomorrow's rota.
7. `special-allergens.csv` with column A `special`, column B `dish_name`, column C `component`, then exactly 14 allergen columns in this order: `Celery`, `Cereals containing gluten`, `Crustaceans`, `Eggs`, `Fish`, `Lupin`, `Milk`, `Molluscs`, `Mustard`, `Peanuts`, `Sesame`, `Soybeans`, `Sulphur dioxide and sulphites`, `Tree nuts`. Then `Specification file`, `Last checked`.
   One row per component, then one row per special with `component` set to `ROLLED UP` carrying the rolled-up result across every component of that dish. Every allergen cell contains exactly one of `PRESENT`, `NOT PRESENT` or `NOT CONFIRMED`. Never leave a cell empty.
8. `no-specification-held.csv` with columns: `special`, `component`, `supplier`, `allergen_columns_left_not_confirmed`, `reason`.
9. `board-and-brief.md` - two short sections per special. The board text: the dish name, the six to twelve words naming the components as they appear in `stock-count.csv`, the price in figures including VAT, the portion count as a number, and where the allergen information is. Then the floor brief: the dish, the price, the portion count, the rolled-up allergen line, what it is cooked in, what it comes with, the one line describing it as supplied in the decisions file, and what to offer when it runs out.
10. `service-record.csv` - the blank sheet to fill in at the end of service, one row per special, with columns in this order: `date`, `special`, `dish_name`, `portions_made`, `portions_sold`, `time_ran_out`, `portions_left`, `stock_planned_to_clear`, `stock_actually_cleared`, `unit`, `why`, `unsold_carried_back_as_dated_line`, `unsold_recorded_as_waste`.
11. `README.md` - the files read, the count date, the number of specials built, and everything that could not be resolved.

## Rules
- **Nothing past its use-by date appears anywhere except `date-triage.csv`.** An item whose `date_type` is `use by` and whose `date_on_pack` is earlier than the service date goes in the `past use-by - waste line` bucket and must not appear in `special-costing.csv`, `special-summary.csv`, `special-allergens.csv`, `board-and-brief.md` or any stock, staff meal or garnish line. If the decisions file names one, write every file, leave that special out, and say so in `README.md`.
- No ingredient may appear in a special unless it appears in `stock-count.csv` with a quantity and a date. Never add a component that is not on the count.
- Every price must come from a supplied invoice or price file. Never fill a gap with a list price, last year's price, a web price or an estimate. A component with no invoice leaves `line_cost_gbp` empty and the special goes into the "could not be costed" line of `README.md`.
- **Never infer an allergen status.** A cell is `NOT PRESENT` only where that component is covered by a supplied specification and that specification does not list the allergen. Otherwise it is `NOT CONFIRMED`. Never read an allergen off a dish name, a component name or a recipe. A `ROLLED UP` row is `PRESENT` if any component is `PRESENT`, `NOT CONFIRMED` if any remaining component is `NOT CONFIRMED`, and `NOT PRESENT` only when every component of that dish is `NOT PRESENT`.
- **Never write a claim on the board you cannot evidence from the inputs.** No farm, breed, boat or supplier name unless an invoice in the folder shows it. No "fresh" for anything the count shows as defrosted or frozen. Never write "gluten free", "dairy free", "nut free", "vegan", "homemade", "home-made", "local" or "healthy" anywhere in `board-and-brief.md`.
- Never write clearing stock, using up, surplus or waste into anything a customer sees. That language belongs in `special-scoring.csv` and `README.md` only.
- The price appears identically in `special-summary.csv`, in the board text and in the floor brief. Never write "while stocks last" in place of a portion count.
- A smaller or starter size is a separate row in `special-summary.csv` with its own price and its own portion count.
- Two specials is the working limit. If the decisions file names more, build the first two, and list the rest in `README.md`.
- The arithmetic must reconcile: `cost_per_portion_gbp` x `portions_available_from_stock` equals `stock_committed_gbp`, and `line_cost_gbp` values sum to `cost_per_portion_gbp` exactly.
- Purchase prices go in net of VAT, selling prices as the customer pays them, and gross profit % is calculated on the VAT-exclusive price.
- Round money to two decimal places and portion counts down to a whole portion, at the point of display only.
- British English, £, DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes. No emoji.
- Every output file carries, as its first line or its first row, the words: `Working document for the owner's head chef and their environmental health officer to check before it is used. Not food safety advice and not a ruling on whether any food is safe to serve.`

## Return
A list of the files written with their absolute paths and row counts, the count date and the number of stock lines counted, the count of items in each triage bucket, the number of specials built, the cost per portion and portion count of each, the stock value each one clears, the count of allergen cells in each of the three states, the number of components with no specification, the number of components with no invoice, and any item in the decisions file that was excluded with the reason.