McPherson AI releases two new QSR operations skills on ClawHub: food cost diagnostics and labor leak auditing

New QSR operations skills for restaurant managers

Blake McPherson has published two new free skills on ClawHub as part of the McPherson AI QSR Operations Suite, building on the previously released qsr-daily-ops-monitor. These skills target the two biggest profit killers in restaurant operations: food cost and labor.

Skill #2: qsr-food-cost-diagnostic

This skill catches food cost issues weekly rather than monthly. When an operator reports food cost running above target, the agent walks through a four-lever diagnostic in sequence:

• Ordering accuracy — checking if ordering matches actual needs
• Portion compliance — verifying builds match specifications
• Recipe adherence — confirming product matches recipe cards
• Waste management — ensuring prep pars match actual demand by day of week

The sequence matters — most variances get caught in levers 1 or 2. The skill identifies root causes, recommends specific corrective actions, sets 7-day follow-ups to check if fixes worked, and tracks patterns to escalate systemic issues.

Skill #3: qsr-labor-leak-auditor

This skill requires only two daily inputs: yesterday's sales and yesterday's labor hours (about 10 seconds). It then:

• Calculates daily labor % against target
• Fires mid-week alerts halfway through payroll with projected weekly overspend and exact hours to cut
• Generates weekly summaries with day-by-day breakdowns
• Detects clock padding — shifts consistently starting early or ending late, calculating exact dollar amounts lost
• Flags scheduling drift when consistently over target
• Watches for overtime before it happens

The mid-week alert is the core value — instead of finding out Friday about being $800 over, operators learn Wednesday they're trending $800 over and need to cut 12 hours across remaining shifts.

How these connect

These aren't standalone tools. The daily ops monitor (skill #1) catches compliance drift every shift, the food cost diagnostic investigates when COGS runs hot, and the labor auditor tracks the other side of the margin equation daily.

Next planned skill: qsr-ghost-inventory-hunter will cross-reference sales volume against theoretical recipe yields to find product that disappeared without appearing on receipts or waste logs.

All skills work entirely through conversation — no POS integration required. The operator brings store knowledge, the agent handles math, tracking, and pattern detection. Based on systems used to manage a high-volume QSR location ranked top 4 for sales nationwide for several years.