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Frequently evaluate competitors' prices.
Even if you are in a contract with one vendor, keep your doors open to other companies. They may be interested in capturing your business.
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Create spec sheets for your inventory.
These will ensure consistency of the products you are buying.
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Create purchase orders.
Check these against incoming invoices to avoid accepting incorrect deliveries and over/under shipment of goods.
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Rotate your inventory.
If possible, assign one or more employees to the task of checking and storing orders. This will ensure consistency in your operation.
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Track your purchasing trends.
Over-ourchasing may cause food spoilage and dead cash flow. By adjusting these orders, you may reduce waste and keep cash moving. Under-purchasing may cause stock shortages. By adjusting these orders, you may prevent stock shortages, avoid emergency purchases, and eventually lower food costs.
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Track your purchase history.
Setting a schedule for tracking invoices will prevent overcharges going unnoticed, even if you have contract prices.
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Implement security measures.
Product theft is a major area of profit loss. Pay attention to weak areas.
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Create stadardized recipes.
This will ensure a more consistent product and shorten training times. Use photographs of dish layouts.
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Determine a plate cost.
Pay attention to condiments, frying oil, and table giveaways. Calculate what it costs per customer and build them into your prices.
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Calculate loss of your inventory.
Loss due to shrinkage, water weight, and trimming must be accounted for in order to calculate an accurate cost of your menu items.
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Add production costs to your prep items.
Determine your production costs and build them into your prices. You may find low food cost percentage dishes carry a high labor cost.
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Avoid short season ingredients.
Tracking price trends will better prepare you for impending seasonal price changes.
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Highlight seasonal items on special menus.
Take advantage of the lower prices by emphasizing their seasonality.
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Look ahead to the next season.
When preparing your next menu, always take into account next season's price changes. Design dishes and prices around this fact.
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Avoid changing all of your menu items at once.
Unless you specialize in seasonal menus, make changes gradually. Increasing all prices may alienate even your most loyal customers and have an adverse affect on your bottom line.
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Set up a production schedule.
Combine prep duties to be more efficient.
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Determine your optimal production volume.
Set par values of prep items, you will avoid over and under production, and reduce spoilage.
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Calculate waste and account for it.
Track cooking mistakes and mis-orders. This will help pinpoint food cost problems.
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Reuse your product scraps and useable waste.
Get creative. Utilize inventory by-products and increase your bottom line.
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Take a physical inventory count.
This data is a vital part of the formula for determining food usage, food costs, and inventory turnover ratios.
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Analyze your sales mix.
Determine your most and least profitable menu items.
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Use your sales mix to determine food costs.
A sales mix will give you a theoretical food cost percent.
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Calculate your employee meal cost.
Look at total costs and costs to sales figures. Credit your food cost budget each period.
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Train your staff well.
Low turnover improves product consistency.
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Train your management staff better.
Your key people ensure the continuity of your operation.
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Establish job descriptions.
Greater efficiency is gained from employees who know what is expected of them.
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Track your employee turnover.
There is a greater cost in training a new employee than an existing employee.
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A raise in pay to employees will save you money.
Continually reward top performers to ensure their continued standards of excellence.
