planning & pairing

Menu planning is an extremely important part of keeping a restaurant’s food cost down, inventory management efficient, and the business profitable. Let's use an example... Look around for an international food restaurant – do you see many of those? No - why? Too many flavor profiles mean the food cost is too high. In this section, we discuss menu planning with one eye on the customer experience and the other on simplicity and food cost. The plan is to produce a menu that is diverse, dynamic and tied to your brand - and cost-effective. 

 

ingredients

Who’s controlling what goes on your menu?  Is your list of ingredients reasonable or extensive and expensive? Tight control of your food cost is a crucial part of an effort to get to and maintain profitability.  At the same time, the quality of your menu is key / critical to the customer experience, attachment to your brand and referrals.  In this section, we present key factors to consider if your goal is creating menu items that people can’t resist. Flavor profiles and ingredients are discussed and sample recipes provided.  We put an emphasis on simplicity that consistently delivers high-profit margins.

 

demographics

Your restaurant must appeal to as many different demographics as possible, but within reason. This means women, men, kids, different races, eating allergies and vegans or vegetarians. In markets (cities) where there are numerous restaurants and choices available, you are limiting your sales volume by not addressing as many of these categories as possible, but again - within reason. In this section, we discuss numerous “inclusive” menu options that can be offered or tweaked to appeal, but at the same time keeping the incremental cost of adding those to a minimum.

 

Food Cost & Calcs

In this section, we discuss methods tracking of food cost for your restaurant. We also present different methods for setting menu prices. We provide all the restaurant calculations you need for figuring out food cost and setting menu prices.

 

portion control

All kitchens must be doing consistent portioning of all items on the menu. In this section, we discuss portion sizes geared towards higher profits. Customer satisfaction with portion size is discussed and how certain high-profit item portioning can have a huge impact on revenue as well as brand satisfaction.

 

running out

Running out of food in certain restaurant genres has actually turned into a huge draw for the restaurants. In others, it can be the kiss of death. For most restaurants, it means you've run out of certain food items because of an unexpected crowd, mistakes in delivery or lack of an efficient ordering system or reminders. In this section, we present examples of running out, both positive and negative, and solutions that will help you avoid terminating your relationship with customers.

 

cutting corners

Quality or cutting corners: who are you? One of the best questions to ask yourself when you look at your menu items is: Would you eat that? Would you be impressed? Also, if you look at competitive restaurants around you that appear to be thriving, are they setting the bar higher? Or is it something else? In this section, we dive deep into the issue of quality vs. survival. We present a very compelling argument in favor of producing top quality food at the same time controlling expenses and increasing customer loyalty.