The Forecast Scorecard: Stop Being Wrong The Same Way Twice
A spreadsheet-only system for logging every forecast and what actually happened. Three numbers (hit rate, bias, worst miss) that change how you plan more than any tool you can buy.
A small Minneapolis empanada story — and the data lessons of running a 200-order-a-week kitchen when every decision is a forecast.
A spreadsheet-only system for logging every forecast and what actually happened. Three numbers (hit rate, bias, worst miss) that change how you plan more than any tool you can buy.
What we learned trying to predict weekly empanada demand. Why ARIMA and Prophet underperform your gut below a certain volume, and what actually worked: a quantile-regression baseline plus a weather-and-weekend correction.
Restaurants treat inventory as last week’s usage times a cushion. That pattern costs real money. Treating every par-level as a probabilistic forecast with an explicit service-level target cut our chicken-filling waste by ~18%.
"We’ll do $40k next month" is a wish, not a plan. Why small businesses should report calibrated ranges instead of point estimates, and a three-step method any owner can run in a spreadsheet.