WHAT A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO GET YOUR BUSINESSES
READY FOR A BUMPER 2010 WITH OUR 7 DAY ROADMAP TO A PROFITABLE YEAR
DAY 3 - ORGANIZE & OPTIMISE THE KITCHEN
How to Lower your Food Cost in 2010:
1.Engineer your menu
Not knowing the order in which your customers read your menu can cost you
money. High margin items in the correct places on your menu will boost
your bottom line time and time again.
Downloadour Menu Item Placement article here. Address
the layout of your menu for maximum impact today.
2.Develop a Standard Item List
How often have you wandered into the storerooms to find the most random
selection of products that don’t appear to be part of any recipe for
current menu items? These items are costing you money. By developing a
standard item list with your Chef based purely on the menu items, you are
avoiding extra “nice to have” purchases which take up space and profits.
3.Develop a Master Price List
Many of your ingredients will vary in price depending on market
availability, such as certain meats and vegetables, however you will still
be able to develop a Master Price List which the chef can use for checking
delivery prices against. This will be especially useful if you have locked
suppliers into certain pricing for a period of time. Any overcharging can
then be corrected at the receiving door before the invoice is paid.
4.Conduct Regular Stocktakes/Inventories If your freezers and stores are like any that I’ve come across in the
past, then you most likely have a considerable amount of “dead” stock on
hand. This may have come from incorrect deliveries, menu changes, over
ordering, or any other number of reasons, but if you conduct regular
inventories, you will be able to identify these items and find ways to use
the stock that is still in good condition and free up space in your stores
by getting rid of stock no longer usable. Remember, finding ways to create
menu items without purchasing additional stock lowers your food cost every
time.
5.Communicate with your staff Letting your staff know what items cost highlights to them the value
of wastage and shows them that you are on top of food cost control. Also
keep wait staff informed of specials added to the menu so that can push
these items to customers.
6.Know your recipes inside out
If you don’t know the recipes cost of every item on your menu, you might
as well forget about worrying about any other point on this list, because
you won’t have a food business for long. Every menu item needs a recipe
card (insert link here) and every recipe card needs to be stored in a
hardback folder in the kitchen so that all cooks and chefs work from the
same recipe. The recipe cards need to be adjusted with ingredient price
fluctuations. Do this before doing anything else to reduce your food cost
because it might highlight inefficient items that can be ditched from your
menu immediately.
7.Check deliveries religiously It never fails to amaze me, that even in the busiest of restaurants,
no-one is scheduled to receive deliveries. Instead, whatever cook or
cleaner is on duty assumes the task of signing for the delivery, often
without checking the quantity or quality of the items delivered. Assign a
member of staff who isn’t going to be busy with other task at delivery
time and you may avoid short deliveries, incorrect deliveries, spoiled
deliveries and over charging. Worth the effort?
8.Get and Read your Reports frequently
It’s all very well implementing these suggestions, but if you can’t see
their impact on the bottom line, then they are truly in vain. Every
operation is different and every situation needs specific solutions, so
you need to know on a weekly basis what your food cost percentage is. You
then need to compare this to your labour cost percentage and establish if
you are within budget projections. Information is power and the more
information you have as to the effect your changes are having, the easier
it will be to plug the leaks when they occur.
9.Lower your stock levels
By lowering your stock levels, you are doing three things: You are
reducing the likelihood of spoilage from overstocking and expiration, You
are reducing the amount of cash tied up in stock in hand and you are
forcing staff to be more efficient with available stocks and not be
dependent on extra stock should the dish “not turn out right…”.
10.Get out of the office
Perhaps the most important of all the suggestions. Too many managers lock
themselves in the office during busy periods analysing figures when they
should be out on the floor observing what has led to the poor results in
the first place. In the US, regional managers from retailer Wal-Mart
regularly ring the offices of store managers and if they pick up, they are
asked what the hell they are doing in the office picking up the phone when
they should be out on the floor managing the business!
Essential for managing a profitable
kitchen.
Preview>>
Keep
Track of Your Profits When You Track Your Kitchen Waste With This
Tracker Sheet Use this waste tracking spreadsheet to help
you calculate loss tests for all of your food products. The formula is
always the same: Gross cost divided by net weight. By knowing your net
cost, your plate cost will be accurate. Tracking your product losses
will also help you monitor the product you are receiving from your
vendors.
more>>
Download:
Recipe Costing Calculator
Do you know the accurate cost prices of your dishes? Can you be sure
that your dishes are priced correctly? Is the Chef accurately analyzing
each dish before putting it on the menu? Download this Recipe Costing
Calculator and calculate the costs and profit margins of individual
dishes so you can control the costs in your kitchen and help to ensure
your food business is profitable.
Preview>>
The
4 Aspects of Food Cost - What you need to know
The concept of food cost must be examined at several different levels in
order to take into account any and all variables. For example, one
variable is your menu sales mix.
more>>
Percentage
Or Margin: Pricing Your Menus Effectively As an operator, you already know the
importance of costing your menus properly. Did you know that you can use
one of two strategies to set your selling prices? The key to good menu
pricing is setting your selling prices to ensure that you earn your
desired profit, and also to ensure that your customers perceive value.
There are two ways to set your selling prices: by percentage & by
margin.
more>>
10
Kitchen Secrets Your Chef Is Hiding From You.
The kitchen is unchartered territory for many bar and restaurant owners
who are afraid to question the chef on matters that they are not too
familiar with. Well. It’s time to get familiar, because your kitchen
could be hemorrhaging money and if its your business, you’ll want to
know how and why.more>>
SO WHAT IS THIS
ROADMAP?
Each day, we will put another piece of the puzzle together so that
by the end of the 7 days, you will have identified your goals, overhauled
your business and relieved the stress and burden of the coming year by
having a clear, actionable plan together with the roadmap that will take
you exactly where you want to go.
Each day for 7 Days, you'll get:
A
Video Strategy Overview
I will bring you a new video every
day with instructions on how to achieve your strategy for that day. I will
talk about the overall strategy as well as breaking down each step needed
to reach that goal. You will hear about the tactics needed to achieve that
strategy and mention the particular tools that you can use to ensure your
success.
A
Step by Step Plan to Follow
Accompanying each video will be a
step by step plan that you can easily follow and tick off as you progress
through the plan. You'll be able to ensure you have each step completed
before beginning the next day.
Access
to all the tools in our toolkit that you will need for your strategy
As you can imagine, you're going to
need many tools and templates to help you in your planning. We've taken
care of that for you with links to every tool you'll need on our websites
and elsewhere.
DAY 1
P - Picture the Prize Only by seeing the end
goal and your reason "why" will you be able to set your goals in place.
Use our tools to execute your plans for 2010.
DAY 2
R - Review & Reveal the Bar
Costs & Profits On average, members of Barkeeper obtain a
higher percentage of their revenue from the bar than any other area. With
this in mind, we will show you how to identify the cost base in the bar,
seek out new streams of revenue and maximise the potential of this key
revenue centre.
DAY 3
O - Organise & Optimise the
Kitchen Don't ignore the kitchen. With so many
expensive ingredients and potential for losses, we show you how to set up
a complete kitchen management program so that at any time you will know
whether you're profitable or not. Essential stuff.
DAY 4
F - Fire or Focus your staff Whether you want to believe it or not, some
of your staff will prevent you from achieving your goals. We'll show you
how to get rid of the staff that don't fit in with your plan while
focusing those staff members you want to keep on the goals ahead.
DAY 5
I - Identify & Implement the
promotion and marketing plan Nothing will happen without telling people.
We'll show you how to attract customers to your business, build a
marketing and promotion plan for the year and take advantage of relevant
events in your area.
DAY 6
T - Taking advantage of
existing Customers and get to the next revenue level Once you have attracted customers, we'll show
you how to increase the average spend, upsell additional items, cross sell
related products and get more bang for your marketing buck!
DAY 7
S - Sealing the deal -
Achieving Business Excellence By day 7, we'll have shown you how to analyze
your business, optimize it's financial performance and attract more
customers. Next it's time to achieve business excellence-the factor that
will keep these customers coming back again and again. Without excellence,
you're just lost in the crowd
If you have any questions about this roadmap, feel free to email me
directly at barry@barkeeper.ie
Download:
Recipe Costing Calculator
The
4 Aspects of Food Cost - What you need to know
Percentage
Or Margin: Pricing Your Menus Effectively
10
Kitchen Secrets Your Chef Is Hiding From You.
Download
the Complete Kitchen Management Software Package.
A
Video Strategy Overview
A
Step by Step Plan to Follow
Access
to all the tools in our toolkit that you will need for your strategy