To Combat Rising Food Costs
As featured on Profitable Hospitality
Learning to budget is a crucial skill for any small business owner, and is a skill that you will perfect with time and experience. However, there are a handful of factors you have no control over.
From increasing rental costs to the success of your competition, some things are out of your hands.
Rising food and produce costs is one issue that most restaurant owners also think is impossible to control – but there ARE ways to work around it.
Sure, you can’t prevent your supplier from hiking up their prices (but you can negotiate!). Use these ten tips to keep your food and produce costs in check.
Re-jig your menu
Your menu is the guide for customers to be prompted what to order. Curate the menu to suit the needs of either cheaper products, seasonal produce or minimising wastage.
Add in new low-cost items to counteract increases in high-cost items, or encourage the customer to spend more on side dishes or entrees.
For example, if veal prices have gone up, a better sales script could persuade customers to add a side order of (low cost) greens or salad. Or, swap out an expensive item like seafood in a Mexican dish for a budget item like dried beans.
…But don’t be dramatic
Menu price changes may be needed, but need to be done with care and backed up with plenty of information for the staff who will handle customer questions.
Some items are more sensitive to price changes than others – do you know what they are? If a price increase is unlikely to reduce volume, make the change now.
Get rid of the filler items
Trim down your menu to exclude the low-profit items that don’t sell much, but are kept on to add variety or extra lines on the menu.
Reconsider your portion sizes
Australians have a real issue with over serving their customers. Take a look at your standard serving sizes of expensive items such as fresh fish, lean red meat, or exotic ingredients – and see if it can be trimmed down.
Buy in season
If your supplier has raised the cost on certain items, make time to discuss local alternatives, or seasonal costs. Certain fresh fruit and vegetables are ridiculously expensive out of season, yet still appear in staple menu items year round.
Smarter, more efficient equipment
Reduce your wastage by opting for modern equipment that uses each food item fully.
HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY SUCCESS INDEX
Article as contained in SILVER CHEF HISI 2018 report
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