Cost Controller

About the Role

A leading food and beverage Company is looking for an experienced Cost Controller to support cost management across our food and beverage brands, branches, factory operations, and central functions.

The successful candidate must have strong F&B experience and a practical understanding of recipes, inventory, purchasing, production, branch operations, wastage, and menu profitability.

This role will work closely with Finance, Operations, Procurement, Factory, Supply Chain, and brand management to identify cost leakage, improve controls, and provide management with accurate and actionable information.

Key Responsibilities

• Monitor food, beverage, packaging, and operating costs across all brands and locations.
• Calculate and maintain accurate recipe costs, product costs, portion costs, and menu margins.
• Compare theoretical consumption against actual consumption and investigate material variances.
• Analyze food cost percentages by brand, branch, category, product, and reporting period.
• Review inventory movements, purchases, transfers, production, wastage, returns, and adjustments.
• Participate in monthly and surprise physical inventory counts.
• Reconcile inventory-count results with system balances and investigate discrepancies.
• Monitor wastage, spoilage, over-portioning, unauthorized consumption, and stock losses.
• Review purchase prices and identify supplier-price changes and their effect on product margins.
• Validate units of measure, product conversions, recipe quantities, yields, and inventory mappings.
• Work with the factory and kitchen teams to calculate production yields and processing losses.
• Review new products, promotions, bundles, discounts, and menu changes before implementation.
• Prepare menu-engineering and product-profitability analyses.
• Identify low-margin, loss-making, or incorrectly priced products.
• Support annual budgeting, forecasting, and cost-saving initiatives.
• Prepare weekly and monthly cost-control reports for management.
• Develop dashboards and exception reports highlighting unusual trends and operational risks.
• Recommend practical corrective actions and follow up on implementation.
• Ensure adherence to inventory, purchasing, receiving, transfer, and wastage procedures.
• Support internal and external audit requirements related to inventory and cost control.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Hospitality Management, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Minimum of 4–6 years of cost-control experience within the food and beverage industry.
• Experience supporting multiple restaurant brands, branches, central kitchens, or food factories is strongly preferred.
• Strong knowledge of food costing, recipe costing, inventory control, menu engineering, and variance analysis.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills are required.
• Experience with POS, inventory, ERP, and business-intelligence systems.
• Experience with systems such as Foodics, Supy, Odoo, SAP, Power BI, or similar platforms is an advantage.
• Strong analytical, reconciliation, and reporting skills.
• Ability to investigate variances by reviewing both system data and physical operations.
• Good command of Arabic and English.
• High level of integrity and attention to detail.

Key Competencies

• Financial and operational analysis
• F&B inventory knowledge
• Investigation and reconciliation
• Data accuracy
• Commercial awareness
• Strong internal controls
• Clear management reporting
• Ability to work across multiple departments and brands