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Example questions to try

The Connector works best when you ask the kind of operational question you would ask a smart member of staff. The AI assistant will look up your recipes, ingredients, and supplier prices, then answer in plain English. The examples below are grouped by what you are trying to figure out.

All answers come from your live Brikly data

Margins, costs, and supplier prices come straight from your CostingBrik account. They reflect whatever the AI assistant pulls at the moment you ask, so changes you make in the Brikly web app are reflected on the next question.

Margin questions​

These are the most common - margin awareness is what the Connector is built for.

  • "What is my margin on a Flat White?"
  • "What is my worst-margin product? My five worst?"
  • "Compare margins on my hot drinks."
  • "Anything below 70% gross margin?"
  • "Group my products by margin band - which categories are squeezed?"

The assistant will surface the per-portion cost, selling price, and gross margin. For batch recipes (tray bakes, traybakes split into slices), it will also show the batch total so you can plan production.

If a recipe has a line the assistant could not price, it says so alongside the figures: the cost is incomplete. An unpriced line contributes nothing, so the cost you are quoted is a floor and the margin is overstated. The assistant knows how many lines are affected and which ones, so ask it to name them. The usual causes are an ingredient or consumable with no supplier price, one that has been archived, and a sub-recipe that no longer resolves. The repair is in the Brikly web app - the Connector cannot attach a price.

Cost-impact questions​

These use the reverse-lookup tool to find every recipe affected by a price change.

  • "Show me everything that uses Whole Milk and the per-portion cost contribution."
  • "Show me everything that uses Back Bacon and the cost per portion."
  • "How exposed am I to coffee bean prices?"
  • "Which recipes use my house oat milk?"

The assistant will list every recipe using that ingredient and the line cost contribution, so you can see the operational impact at a glance. For an annualised P&L number, follow up with a what-if question.

What-if questions​

These use the what-if simulator. The assistant first resolves the affected recipe set (so you can confirm), then runs the sandboxed simulation and quotes the annualised profit impact, the top-impacted recipes, and a per-category rollup. Results are weighted by POS sales (rolling 52-week average) where available, falling back to your manually entered weekly sales estimate.

  • "If Whole Milk goes up 10%, what does that do to my annual profit?"
  • "Model a 5% rise on every coffee bean SKU - which drinks lose the most margin?"
  • "What if I swapped dairy milk for oat milk on Latte and Cappuccino, with about 10% more oat milk per drink for the same body?"
  • "What if I bumped every hot drink by 5% but held the Flat White at the current price?"
  • "Model VAT going from 20% to 12.5% on standard-rated items - how much would that be worth annually?"
  • "If I cut the brownie tray yield from 16 to 14, what does my new per-slice cost look like?"
  • "Save that scenario as 'pre-summer flour hike' so I can come back to it."
  • "List my saved scenarios and show me the simulated impact of 'pre-summer flour hike'."

A few things to know about what-if answers:

  • The simulator never changes anything live. It only models the impact. Applying a scenario to live recipes is a deliberate "Push" step in the What-If page of the Brikly web app, not something the assistant can do from chat.
  • Recipes with no sales data are excluded from the headline number and surfaced separately, so a brand-new product with no POS history does not silently skew the answer. Add a manual weekly sales estimate in CostingBrik if you want a recipe included.
  • Margin percentages are VAT-correct (computed against the net price), so zero-rated and standard-rated items can be compared like-for-like.
  • The assistant will not recommend a specific price move on its own. If it does, treat it as a suggestion - your competitor mix, footfall, and customer expectation drive the right call, not the spreadsheet.

Supplier questions​

  • "Show me my preferred suppliers for dairy."
  • "Are there cheaper alternatives I am ignoring?"
  • "What is the recent price history for Salted Butter?"
  • "Which suppliers have raised prices in the last quarter?"

If a cheaper alternative supplier exists for an ingredient, the response will flag it - the Connector reads the same "cheaper supplier available" indicator the web app uses.

Price-change review questions​

These cover the two ends of the price-change flow: what is waiting for your attention now, and what has already hit your margins.

Outstanding reviews (forward-looking):

  • "Anything waiting for me to review?"
  • "What price changes have I not confirmed yet, and how big are they?"
  • "Show me pending price reviews over £500 estimated annual impact."
  • "What is the biggest unreviewed price change?"
  • "Any outstanding reviews at the Brighton site?"

The assistant uses the same outstanding-queue the Price Change Review wizard reads in the Brikly web app. Each pending review is returned with an estimated annual profit impact, computed by summing the per-recipe cost increase times annual unit sales (POS rolling weekly average, falling back to your manual estimate). The list is pre-sorted biggest first, so the assistant can triage straight away.

A few things to know:

  • The assistant cannot confirm or reject a review. That stays in the Brikly web app's Price Change Review page. The Connector is read-only on this surface.
  • The annual impact matches the wizard exactly. Same service, same calculation. If you see a different number in chat versus the web app, that is a bug - tell us.
  • Recipes with no sales data are counted but not in the headline. If an ingredient is used in a recipe you have not yet recorded sales for, the recipe contributes to recipes_affected_count but not to the estimated annual impact.
  • Default cap is 20 results. If you have a bigger backlog, the assistant will tell you and you can raise the limit or filter by location.

Confirmed history (backward-looking):

  • "What price changes hit my margins last quarter?"
  • "Show me confirmed increases over the last three months."
  • "Has anything saved me money since January?"

This is the price-change history we have already snapshotted, with net annual impact and the top recipes affected by each event. Pair it with the outstanding queue when answering "where am I, and where am I going?" margin questions.

  • "List my products grouped by category."
  • "What does my menu cost across the Brighton site?"
  • "Are there any inactive products I should retire properly?"
  • "How many recipes use a sub-recipe (component) versus raw ingredients only?"

For multi-site operators, the Connector knows about each location and can filter or compare.

These read MenuBrik: what your till actually sold and actually earned, item by item. They need a MenuBrik subscription (an add-on to CostingBrik) and a connected POS - without both, the assistant is told which one is missing and what to do about it, and your costing and invoice questions carry on working as normal.

  • "What is costing me money on the menu right now?"
  • "What has changed on the menu since last week?"
  • "Which items are priced thin, and what does Brikly suggest I charge?"
  • "How did the Flat White sell over the last 30 days - quantity, revenue and margin?"
  • "What are my top earners this month, and what is just sitting there?"
  • "How did yesterday go compared with a normal Tuesday?"
  • "When am I busiest, and which trading band takes the most?"
  • "Which categories are up or down against the previous month?"
  • "Do my modifier sets pay for themselves?"
  • "How has my menu health score moved over the last few weeks?"

A few things to know about menu performance answers:

  • The numbers are the ones the web app shows, with one exception. The per-item figures, what needs attention, the trading bands and the category comparison use the same calculations, the same windows and the same wording as the MenuBrik screens, so an answer in chat should match what you see when you log in. If it does not, that is a bug - tell us. The exception is the week-by-week health score series: Brikly stores a health score with every weekly snapshot, but no screen charts them, so that one answer is Connector-only and there is nothing to compare it against. The current score is on the Menu Performance page as usual.
  • "What needs attention" is the Monday snapshot. Brikly writes it once a week, fixed at the last 30 days and across all your sites, which is why that answer takes no date range and no site filter. The assistant is told when the snapshot was written and how old it is. Once it is more than 21 days old the rows are withheld rather than quoted as current, and the assistant should say so instead of guessing.
  • Two "last 30 days" figures can still differ on cost, and the weekly snapshot on dates. Every live menu read stops at yesterday, because the till sync lands the previous day in the small hours, so a 30-day answer covers the same 30 trading days whichever live read you ask. The per-item and modifier reads price that window at today's recipe cost; the trading-band and category reads price each day at the cost recorded on that day. "What needs attention" is the exception on dates: its 30 days end the day before its Monday snapshot was written, which can be up to three weeks ago. All of them are right; they answer slightly different questions. Ask which read a number came from rather than trying to reconcile two of them.
  • A blank margin or health score is a refusal, not a zero. When too little of the revenue in the window comes from items Brikly can cost, it declines to judge and returns nothing rather than a misleading figure. Ask the assistant to quote the cost-coverage wording it was given; the repair is to link more till items to recipes in the Brikly web app.
  • The suggested price on a priced-thin item is Brikly's arithmetic, not the assistant's. It is your own recipe cost per portion against the target gross profit for that item's menu group, the same figure the web app shows under "Suggested price". It arrives only when the assistant pulls up that one item, so a list of priced-thin items names them and their money at stake without quoting a price until you ask about one of them. The assistant may quote it, with the target it solves for, but it should not invent one, round it, or produce one for an item where Brikly withheld it. The decision stays yours, and the price changes on the till.
  • Nothing writes back. Acknowledging a flag, setting a margin target and moving a category all stay in the Brikly web app.

Invoice questions​

The Connector can list and inspect invoices. Uploading is not supported through the Connector - use the web upload, Chrome extension, Invoice Inbox, or Quick Capture instead. Line-level review still happens in the Brikly web app - the assistant deliberately does not quote individual invoice lines because they are pre-review and may have wrong units or pack sizes.

  • "Did any invoices come in this week? Group them by supplier."
  • "Show me last month's Bidfood invoices and their totals."
  • "Anything from Brakes I have not reviewed yet?"
  • "What is the most recent invoice you can see?"
  • "Do we already have Octopus Energy invoice 12345678 in Brikly?"

A few things to know about invoice answers:

  • Defaults to processed invoices only. The list filter hides invoices still being extracted in the background so the totals you see are safe to quote. Ask "show me anything still processing" and the assistant will switch the filter.
  • Defaults to ingredient and consumable invoices. Expense invoices (utilities, services, equipment, premises, other) are left out unless you ask about a bill or an expense supplier, and they come back labelled with their category. The assistant will not read their skipped lines as needing review.
  • Currency-aware. If your invoices are in EUR or USD (multi-currency suppliers), the assistant will quote the totals in the original currency.
  • No line-item quotes. If you ask "what did I pay per kilo for cheddar on the last invoice?", the assistant will direct you to the Brikly web app. Line items are unreliable until a human confirms them, and we will not let the assistant quote pre-review numbers.

Tips for getting good answers​

Be specific. "What is my margin on a Latte?" works better than "tell me about my drinks."

Mention Brikly when context is missing. Most assistants will work it out, but if you have multiple integrations, "using my Brikly data" makes the routing explicit.

Ask for the working, not just the answer. "What is my Latte margin and how is it composed?" will produce the per-ingredient breakdown rather than just a single number. Lines that could not be priced are marked not costed in that breakdown, so you can see which ones are holding the figure down.

Pin the timeframe for price questions. "What did Whole Milk cost last month versus this month?" beats "tell me about Whole Milk's price."

Take pricing recommendations with a grain of salt. The assistant has been told not to recommend specific price changes (raising the latte by 30p, etc.) without operator-supplied constraints. If it does, treat it as a suggestion rather than a recipe - your operational context (footfall, customer mix, competitor prices) is what dictates the right move.

What it cannot answer​

The Connector currently exposes CostingBrik, MenuBrik's performance reads, and invoice headers. The assistant cannot:

  • show individual POS transactions or customer data
  • tell you about food safety records, audits, or temperature checks (that is SafetyBrik)
  • look at staff hours, rotas, or payroll (that is StaffBrik); the only labour figure it carries is the minutes and the cost per portion a recipe itself records
  • quote individual invoice line items, per-line confidence scores, or supplier order history - line-level work happens in the Brikly web app

If you ask about any of these, the assistant will tell you to use the Brikly web app instead. Coverage will expand as we add more Briks to the Connector over time.

Next steps​