FeeHawk / Guides

Catch-weight items: checking price per pound on meat and seafood

Proteins are often sold by catch weight: you pay a price per pound for the actual weight of each case. Because the total changes every delivery, a price-per-pound increase is easy to miss.

How it appears

A catch-weight line usually shows the number of cases, the total weight (sometimes each case's weight), a price per pound, and the extended amount. Unit codes like LB or CW are common.

Three checks

1. Price per pound. Compare to last week's and to your quote. This is where creep hides, because the extended total moves anyway.
2. Weight. If your supplier lists a nominal case weight (for example, "4/10 lb avg"), a delivery far under that is worth weighing.
3. Math. Weight × price per pound should equal the extended amount. Errors are uncommon, but they do happen when invoices are corrected by hand.

Weigh a sample

You don't need to weigh everything. Weigh one case of your highest-spend protein each week. If it is consistently under the invoiced weight, raise it with your rep with the numbers.

Track the per-pound trend

Commodity proteins move with the market, so a change is not automatically wrong. What matters is knowing about it in time to adjust a menu price or switch a cut. FeeHawk tracks price per pound for each catch-weight item and shows the trend in the weekly email.