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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.

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.

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?"

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.
  • 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.

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 and invoice headers. The assistant cannot:

  • show actual sales volumes or POS data
  • tell you about food safety records, audits, or temperature checks (that is SafetyBrik)
  • look at staff hours, rotas, or labour cost (that is StaffBrik)
  • 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​