Documentation
What the market price data is, and is not
The difference between a published market observation and the price a kitchen actually pays, and which questions each can settle.
Last reviewed against the product on .
Novus Restaurant publishes food market observations collected from official statistical agencies. This page is about what those numbers are, because the most expensive mistake a kitchen can make with them is to treat one as the price of an ingredient.
A market observation is not your delivered cost
A published observation is a price recorded by an agency, at a level and a stage of the supply chain that the agency chose. It is not what a supplier will charge you on Tuesday. Between the two sit freight, pack size, contract terms, minimum orders, waste, and the simple fact that your supplier is not the market.
What it is good for
Direction and magnitude. If a producer price series has moved sharply, that movement is real and it will reach you eventually, even though the number itself is not your number. That makes this data useful for anticipating a conversation with a supplier, not for winning one.
Levels, and why mixing them is wrong
Observations arrive at different levels, and they are not interchangeable.
| Level | What it measures | Closest to a kitchen |
|---|---|---|
| Producer | What a farm receives | Furthest |
| Wholesale | Trade between businesses | Closer |
| Retail | Shelf price to the public | Closest, still not yours |
| Index | Change against a base period, not a price | Direction only |
Measured from the provider registry in src/lib/data-sources/provider-registry.ts.
An index is the one most often misread. It carries no currency and no unit: it says how much something moved, never what it costs.
Where to look next
The coverage page lists every country and provider with its freshness, and methodology sets out how observations are normalised before they are published.