One of the biggest budget line items that restaurant owners and managers comb over is food cost. While the National Restaurant Association recently reported that spending is forecasted to increase in this year, establishments will still look for ways to maintain a low spending cap for certain costs.
Jeremiah Higgins, Operations Partner with HJL Group Restaurant Advisors (www.hjlrestaurantadvisors.com), offers fellow operations teams to take into consideration a few tips, tricks and tools his company uses to lower food cost for the nearly 30 establishments they have opened:
· Start with your delivery area. Many problems with your food cost can be stopped right at your back door.
· Ask each vendor to build current order guides listing ONLY the product that you buy from them. Copy this spreadsheet to your office computer so that your ordering managers can print them out themselves.
· Keep your inventory tight. These sheets should hang on a clipboard in a specified area near your back door
· Purchase an industrial food service floor scale that can be kept in your kitchen prep area to weigh in any product that you buy by the pound. (Higgins likes the OHAUS Champ Floor Scale)
· Discuss with your salesperson a standard delivery time for their product. Higgins suggests that all deliveries arrive between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. A time-stressed manager may skip weighing in the product, or fail to consult the purveyor product order sheets.
posted by Tiffany Haslacker
01/26/2013
