Garnishes look like a small budget line until you look at them correctly.
A bar running 150 cocktail covers per night, where half require a citrus garnish, is going through a real volume of lemons, oranges, and limes. If that prep isn't organized by a yield number, you're ordering by feel, over-prepping and discarding, or under-prepping and rushing through sub-par garnishes mid-service. Both directions cost money.
A garnish yield sheet is how you know exactly what to prep and exactly what it costs.
For each garnish type, run this calculation once and record the number.
Citrus twists. One medium lemon yields 5 to 7 twists on average, depending on size and the skill of the cutter. One orange yields 4 to 6 expressed peels, more if the fruit is large. Run this calculation on a dozen of each and average your results. Use that number consistently, then update it if your supplier changes.
Citrus wheels and half-wheels. One lemon at 6 wheels per fruit is a typical yield once you remove the ends. One lime at 8 to 10 half-wheels depending on size and how thick the cuts run. If your prep person cuts wheels at different thicknesses depending on the day, standardize the cut.
Cherries. Count the jar. Drain and count at the start of the program, then track per service. Most premium cocktail cherries run 40 to 60 per jar. Know your number so you're ordering ahead of the weekend, not scrambling Friday afternoon.
Herb bunches. A standard bunch of mint typically yields 30 to 40 usable sprigs for garnish after removing damaged leaves. This varies by supplier and season. Weigh the bunch at purchase, track how many garnishes it yields, and establish your per-bunch average over two or three orders.
Dehydrated garnishes. If you're making in-house, track oven time, yield percentage from fresh to dried, and shelf life. Most operators who make dehydrated citrus don't know their real cost because they're not tracking the time or the yield loss. Run the numbers once. The answer is usually surprising in one direction or the other.
The difference between a bar that preps by feel and one that preps by yield is often several percentage points of bar cost. The gap comes from over-prepping and discarding, from waste that never gets attributed to any line item, and from ordering without precision.
Build the yield sheet once. Update it when you change suppliers or change the garnish program. Post it in the prep station where the person doing garnish prep actually works. The sheet does nothing sitting in a Google Drive folder.