Fix Your Food Cost Problem, Part 1 – Counting, Weighing & Menu Management
Find the hidden money and waste in your recipes, stock control and menu. Want the Action Sheet ? Click Here
Food costs, recipes and menu profitability are a big topic, so we’re covering it in two parts. First, we’re going to look at how better counting, weighing and menu management will help to fix food cost problems. In the second article, we will look at purchasing and stock management.
The price of supplies has risen dramatically – dry goods, meat, seafood and vegetables.Even the basics like cooking oil and packaging have seen amazing increases. If you don’t have accurate recipe costing, it could mean that many of the menu items you sell are barely profitable. Poor menu design could mean you don’t maximise sales of your most profitable items.
At Foodie Coaches, we help our members ‘find hidden money’ in all their expenses, and there’s sure to be a lot of ‘hidden money and waste’ in your recipe and menu management. Careful measuring, weighing and counting will help you discover this. Think of this as like a crash diet for the business – lots of small moves with your recipes and menu can make a big difference.
There’s a saying ‘don’t waste a crisis’ – you can use this situation with soaring prices to put in place better purchasing, costing and recipe management systems, so the improvements are permanent.
Let’s improve Counting, Weighing & Menu Management
Check and Update Recipes
Write down and cost all your recipes. Recipe management systems like Restoke and recipe software are easy to use, or the Foodie Coaches spreadsheets that are available for members.
Get help to do the administrative side of recipe updates – this is a great job for a student who’s good at typing and maths, or someone on Fiverr.com who can put them into a spreadsheet. If they’re handwritten, take photos of each page and make writing these out another project for a helper. Your time is too valuable to be lost in the weeds with this!
Your recipe system should have dynamic pricing – eg when the price of zucchini goes up, the new price feeds through to all items using it.
Purchase costing scales to give accurate information about portion costs – see our separate video on Portion Control.
Match Item Sales with Stock Used – for Key Items
Match the sales shown on your POS, with the items used shown by your stocktake.
Match sales with a ‘key item’ stocktake at least every 2 weeks – your top 20 items by value.
As you start to count regularly, you will make some interesting discoveries!
Improve Menu Management
Reduce your menu size, because about 80% of your sales come from 20% of your menu.
When you cut menu size, that means less stock on hand and simpler ordering for you and customers.
Eliminate your least profitable items, and promote the profit heroes that make the most money.
Start (or increase) the transition to online menus. These allow you to ‘switch off’ items that have a sudden leap in prices eg strawberries or green vegetables, or make an instant substitution. No more needing to reprint the menu with all the drama that involves! Systems like Mr Yum make this very easy.
When you start to count and weigh products properly, you are also improving the number skills of your chefs and managers. Putting the focus on menu management and engineering gives an immediate payoff with increased sales (and profit) from the most profitable items.
Bring your staff in on this ‘crisis’, to make them aware of the real cost of running a business – the more you can open your books with this, the better.
Now is also the time to introduce or upgrade your recipe management system. It’s also time to transition to digital menus, to give you maximum flexibility.
Want to get some 1 on 1 help? Talk to one of our coaches
Want the Action Sheet ? Click Here
Food costs, recipes and menu profitability are a big topic, so we’re covering it in two parts. First, we’re going to look at how better counting, weighing and menu management will help to fix food cost problems. In the second article, we will look at purchasing and stock management.
The price of supplies has risen dramatically – dry goods, meat, seafood and vegetables.Even the basics like cooking oil and packaging have seen amazing increases. If you don’t have accurate recipe costing, it could mean that many of the menu items you sell are barely profitable. Poor menu design could mean you don’t maximise sales of your most profitable items.
At Foodie Coaches, we help our members ‘find hidden money’ in all their expenses, and there’s sure to be a lot of ‘hidden money and waste’ in your recipe and menu management. Careful measuring, weighing and counting will help you discover this. Think of this as like a crash diet for the business – lots of small moves with your recipes and menu can make a big difference.
There’s a saying ‘don’t waste a crisis’ – you can use this situation with soaring prices to put in place better purchasing, costing and recipe management systems, so the improvements are permanent.
Let’s improve Counting, Weighing & Menu Management
Check and Update Recipes
Write down and cost all your recipes. Recipe management systems like Restoke and recipe software are easy to use, or the Foodie Coaches spreadsheets that are available for members.
Get help to do the administrative side of recipe updates – this is a great job for a student who’s good at typing and maths, or someone on Fiverr.com who can put them into a spreadsheet. If they’re handwritten, take photos of each page and make writing these out another project for a helper. Your time is too valuable to be lost in the weeds with this!
Your recipe system should have dynamic pricing – eg when the price of zucchini goes up, the new price feeds through to all items using it.
Purchase costing scales to give accurate information about portion costs – see our separate video on Portion Control.
Match Item Sales with Stock Used – for Key Items
Match the sales shown on your POS, with the items used shown by your stocktake.
Match sales with a ‘key item’ stocktake at least every 2 weeks – your top 20 items by value.
As you start to count regularly, you will make some interesting discoveries!
Improve Menu Management
Reduce your menu size, because about 80% of your sales come from 20% of your menu.
When you cut menu size, that means less stock on hand and simpler ordering for you and customers.
Eliminate your least profitable items, and promote the profit heroes that make the most money.
Start (or increase) the transition to online menus. These allow you to ‘switch off’ items that have a sudden leap in prices eg strawberries or green vegetables, or make an instant substitution. No more needing to reprint the menu with all the drama that involves! Systems like Mr Yum make this very easy.
When you start to count and weigh products properly, you are also improving the number skills of your chefs and managers. Putting the focus on menu management and engineering gives an immediate payoff with increased sales (and profit) from the most profitable items.
Bring your staff in on this ‘crisis’, to make them aware of the real cost of running a business – the more you can open your books with this, the better.
Now is also the time to introduce or upgrade your recipe management system. It’s also time to transition to digital menus, to give you maximum flexibility.
Want to get some 1 on 1 help? Talk to one of our coaches
If you cut food costs by just 1%, what would you save in a year?
One Week of Food Costs = $________ – divide by 100 = $________ X 52 = $_________
Check the other useful blog posts on the Foodie Coaches website…