Little Fig Cafe

Menu, recipes and food costs, till orders, rota, deliveries, waste and the nightly cash-up for a small cafe.

Download 433 KB16 tables, 20 queries, 10 reports, 3 print templates and 29,980 invented records, dated back from 2026-10-22.

Rutba Data Files with Little Fig Cafe, the cafe or restaurant sample, open at its print template Receipt: a page laid out with the business's own name and address at the head and one of its records filled in, beside the list of the database's tables and how many records each holds — Little Fig Cafe in Rutba Data Files, made with its invented records and open at its print template Receipt.

Overview

For the owner or manager of a small cafe who wants to see what each dish costs to make, what sells and when, whether the wages are in hand against the takings, what to order from each supplier and what is being thrown away.

Little Fig Cafe is an invented all-day cafe with about thirty seats and a takeaway counter. It opens every day but Christmas Day, from half past seven (half past eight at weekends) until half past four. Breakfast is served until half past eleven and lunch until half past three; coffee, cold drinks and cakes all day. Its head baker makes the cakes on site each morning. Eight people work there, and six invented suppliers deliver coffee, dairy, produce, meat and fish, bread and dry goods, each on its own days.

The records cover the last fourteen months: a cash-up sheet for every day the cafe opened, the rota as it was worked, every delivery and its bill, and what was thrown away. The till's orders are here line by line for the last eight weeks, about six thousand of them; older days are in their cash-up sheets. Trade is busier at weekends, in July and August and on sunny days, and quieter in January. The rota runs two weeks ahead. The records stop at the start of today: this morning's deliveries are not booked in yet and this morning's orders to suppliers are not placed, so the order list shows what to ask for.

Every dish has a recipe in its ingredients' own units, so its food cost comes from the ingredients' current prices. Prices are pounds, as a cafe in the UK would charge them, but nothing in the design depends on the currency.

The menu prices include VAT, as a cafe's prices to the public do. The sample keeps the VAT simple and says so: everything eaten in, every drink and any hot food taken away carries the standard rate of 20%, and cold food taken away (the cakes and bakes, the cold bagel and rolls) carries none. The real rules have more cases than that, such as hot food kept warm, cold drinks and snacks, so set each dish's Takeaway VAT Rate to what applies to you. Each line of a bill keeps the rate it was sold at, each bill keeps its VAT, and each day's cash-up keeps the day's VAT for the return.

It prints three documents: a till receipt for every bill, numbered RCP-2026-00042; a purchase order for every order to a supplier, numbered PO-2026-0042, made each morning from the order list; and a weekly payslip for each person, numbered PAY-2026-0042, from the shifts on the rota. The payslip shows hours, rate and gross pay only: tax, National Insurance, pension and other deductions are left for the payroll to work out.

In Rutba Data Files, choose Cafe or restaurant on the start screen, then With sample records to look around, or Empty for the same design with nothing in it.

It suits, with small changes

A coffee shop or kiosk
A small restaurant or bistro
A bakery with a few tables
A food truck or market stall
A sandwich bar or takeaway
A tea room or farm shop cafe

Read on

Tutorial: the everyday tasks: 7 everyday tasks, step by step, each naming what to open.
Tables, fields and relationships: every field of 16 tables, and how they are related.
Queries, forms, reports and print templates: what each one shows, its criteria and calculated columns, and when to print it.

Things you should know

Everything in a sample's records is invented: the business, the people, their addresses, e-mail addresses on example domains that reach nobody, and phone numbers from the ranges kept for drama and fiction. Tax, company and bank numbers are placeholders of zeros.
The dates count back from the day the file was made, and some run on into the weeks after it, as real bookings and due dates do. Made from the Data Files start screen, a sample is dated from that day. Queries that compare with today (overdue, due this week) show more as a downloaded file gets older.
To start empty, choose the same business on the start screen and then Empty: the same tables, queries, forms, reports and print templates, with nothing in them but the Start Here guide.
Your records live in one file on your computer. Keep copies: File, Save As makes one, and a copy on another drive or in your own cloud storage keeps it safe if this computer is lost. Close the database before copying the file by hand.
Every change to the design (a new field, a renamed table) is a numbered step that Data Files keeps, so you can see what was changed and when.
The till's bills, Orders and Order Lines, go back eight weeks; the Cash Ups go back the whole fourteen months and are where the weekly and monthly figures come from. If your till keeps its own records you can skip Orders and keep only the cash-ups.
Nothing here takes sales off the stock by itself. In Stock is what the last count, the deliveries and the waste sheet say, so count the stock now and then and correct it.
A bill's Total, Net and Tax, and a payslip's Hours and Gross Pay, are stored figures, typed when the record is made, not added up from the lines by the form. The sample's own are exactly the sums of their lines, rounded line by line as a till rounds them.
The VAT is kept simple: 20% on everything eaten in, on drinks and on hot food taken away; nought on cold food taken away. Set each dish's Takeaway VAT Rate to what the rules say for you, and have your VAT checked by an accountant.
A print template prints every record of its table unless you choose some: Receipt prints every bill (voided ones too), Purchase order every purchase, Payslip every payslip. Choose the ones you want before pressing Print.
The records stop at the start of today: this morning's deliveries are not booked in and this morning's orders not yet placed, so the order list shows what to ask for today. The rota runs two weeks ahead, and the week now running has no payslips yet.
The VAT number, company number and bank details on the Business record are placeholders of noughts and Xs. Put in your own before printing anything for real.

Starting with your own records

Start with Business: your own name, address, VAT number and the footer your receipts carry. Then Suppliers, then Ingredients with each one's unit, cost per unit, supplier and reorder level. Then Menu Categories, then Menu Items, then the Recipe Lines for each dish, numbering each recipe's lines from 1; Menu costing works as soon as a dish has its recipe. Add your Staff and plan the Shifts for the coming week. From then on, day to day: a Purchase and its lines when you order from a supplier, its Received On when it arrives and its Paid On when the bill is paid; the Waste sheet as things are thrown away; and a Cash Up at each close. If your till keeps its own records, the Cash Ups alone give the weekly and monthly figures; enter Orders and Order Lines only if you want best sellers and the busy hours here too. Keep In Stock up to date from a stock count, as Data Files does not take sales off it by itself.

Making it yours

Every change to the design is a numbered step in Data Files, so a change can be seen and undone.

Measure the food cost against what the cafe keeps rather than what the customer pays: in a copy of Menu costing, divide by [Price] / 1.2 in place of [Price], so the VAT within the price is left out.
Add a Packaging Cost field to Menu Items for the cup, lid or box a takeaway goes out in, and add it to the food cost in a copy of Menu costing to see what a takeaway really costs.
Add yes/no allergen fields to Ingredients (gluten, milk, eggs, nuts and the rest) and a query that lists the dishes using any ingredient marked Yes, for the allergen folder.
A bakery can add a Bakes table (date, dish, made, left over at close) to see how much of each cake to make on each day of the week.
A food truck can drop Table No and Covers and add a Pitch field to Cash Ups, then group the takings by pitch to see which places pay.
A restaurant can add a Bookings table (date, time, covers, name, phone, table) and a query for the bookings in the next 7 days.
Add a Running Costs table (date, kind, amount) for rent, power and card fees, and a query by month beside Takings by month to see the profit.
Add a Tips field to Cash Ups and a column summing it in Takings and wages by week, so tips are kept apart from the takings.

Questions people ask

How do I reprint a customer's receipt from last week?: Find the bill on the Orders form by its time in When or its Number, then open the print template Receipt, choose that bill and press Print. Bills older than eight weeks are not in the sample; in your own file every bill you keep can be reprinted.
Why does a carrot cake have VAT eaten in but none taken away?: In the UK, food eaten on the premises carries the standard rate, while cold food taken away is zero-rated. Each line of a bill keeps the rate it was sold at in Tax Rate, from the dish's Takeaway VAT Rate when it went out the door. The real rules have more cases; the sample keeps to these two.
Where are tax and National Insurance on the payslip?: They are not worked out here. The payslip shows the hours from the rota, the rate and the gross pay; the payroll works out tax, National Insurance and pension from the gross pay and gives its own statement of net pay. You can add a Payslip Deductions table pointing at Payslips if you want them here.
I placed an order but the ingredient is still on Ingredients to order. Why?: The list leaves out what has something On Order. Type the amount ordered in On Order on the Ingredients form, and set it back to nought when the delivery is booked in.
If I put a price up, do last month's takings change?: No. Each bill line keeps its own Unit Price, so old bills and their totals stay as they were. Menu costing uses today's price and today's ingredient costs.
How do I find the VAT for my quarter's return?: Print the report Monthly takings and add up the VAT column for the three months of the quarter. It comes from the VAT on each day's cash-up, which is the till's reading.
Can I start with my own menu and keep the design?: Yes. Make the sample empty, fill in Business with your own details, then follow the order under starting empty: suppliers and ingredients first, then the menu and its recipes, then your staff.

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