Free tool
What your weekly family box actually leaves you
Enter the box price and your real per pan costs to see food cost percent, the margin the box leaves and what each entree contributes.
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How much chicken to pull and how early to pull it
Work the thaw backward from orders so you open the right number of cases and start the pull early enough to stay in refrigerated thaw.
Thaw math has two failure modes and both cost money. Pull too little and you are running warm water over sealed bags at six in the morning, which is legal only under strict conditions and is never what you planned. Pull too much and half a case sits thawed with a two day clock on it while your next production run is nine days out.
This planner starts from the orders that include the chicken entree and works back through servings, cooked portion weight and cook yield to the raw pounds you actually have to move from freezer to walk in. Then it tells you how many whole cases that means, what is left over for the next run and how many hours ahead of the cook you need to start, with a stacking allowance because three cases in one cooler do not thaw like one.
Your result
Raw pounds to pull
88.2
Frozen weight to move out of the freezer, after cook and trim loss.
Whole cases to open
3
Always rounded up, because half a frozen case does not thaw on demand.
Pounds left over after the run
31.8
Plan a use for this within two days or it becomes staff meal.
Hours ahead of the cook to start the thaw
42
Includes six extra hours for each case stacked in the same cooler space.
Refrigerated thaw only. If the lead hours land inside your prep window, split the pull across two days rather than speeding it up.
Where the leftover pounds should go
The leftover figure is the one that decides whether your protein spend is tight or sloppy. Nine pounds hanging off the third case is not a rounding error, it is roughly six family portions, and thawed poultry does not wait for next Thursday. The kitchens that stay clean here build a use for it into the menu rather than improvising on the day.
Two habits work. Either keep a soup, pot pie or enchilada entree in the rotation that absorbs odd protein weights, or offer a small number of single serve lunches sold off the same run. Both turn the leftover into revenue instead of shrink. What does not work is refreezing thawed raw product and hoping the texture holds, because it will show up in the reheat as the exact watery result customers complain about.
Building the pull into the week
If the planner says forty two hours and your cook starts at seven on Thursday morning, the pull is Tuesday at one in the afternoon, which means it has to happen before your order deadline closes if the deadline is Tuesday night. That is the scheduling conflict most kitchens discover the hard way. The fix is either an earlier deadline or a standing base pull with a top up once orders close.
The base plus top up pattern is what most kitchens at forty boxes settle on. Pull the two cases you know you will need on Monday, then pull the third on Tuesday night if the order count justifies it. FreezerFive works this way against your real order sheet, so the pull sheet prints with the base and the top up already separated by cook day.
Questions about this calculator
What cook yield should I use if I have never measured it?
Sixty eight percent is a reasonable starting point for boneless skinless chicken breast that is trimmed, seared and finished in sauce. Thighs run a little higher, anything braised and drained runs lower. Measure it once with a scale on a normal run and the number stops being a guess.
Can I thaw faster than this if I am short?
Cold running water and cooking from frozen are the only recognized alternatives to refrigerated thaw, and both change your process and your timing. Neither is a plan you want to depend on weekly. If you are regularly short, the deadline is too close to the cook day.
Does this work for beef and pork too?
Yes, with different values. Change the cooked ounces per serving, the cook yield and the case weight to match the cut, since a chuck roast for braising behaves nothing like a chicken breast. The structure of the calculation is the same for any protein you portion by weight.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The frozen meal label and allergen audit checklist
Run this checklist across one entree before your next production day and you will find out in twenty minutes what an inspector would find in five.
Take that number off the screen and onto a pan tag
A figure you calculated once on a Sunday is useful for about four days. A figure that redoes itself when eleven more households add the chicken entree before the deadline is what gives the evening back. Bring one recipe card and a normal week's order count to a demo and watch the same calculation arrive on a pull sheet, a pan tag and a route sheet without you retyping it.