9 Ways to Reduce Food Cost Without Giving in on Quality

Let’s bring your food costs down while keeping the quality high.

In the hospitality industry food costs averages between a whopping 28%-35% of turnover. Reducing food costs is serious business. It affects your bottom line big time.

Let’s face it, the basic equation of check average divided by food purchases simple doesn’t cut it anymore in the highly competitive restaurant industry.

You need to know how to calculate food costs accurately and to be able to keep the Costs of Goods Sold (CoGS) down.

Here are 9 proven ways to reduce food costs in a restaurant business.

1. Know what you are spending
2. Portion control
3. Pre-portion in mise en place
4. Keep menus focused
5. By at the best price and be creative
6. Love your supplier
7. Working from scratch, is it worth the effort?
8. Reduce no shows
9. Waste as little as possible

Let’s dig deeper into each solution and slash food costs.

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>> Download Your Free Copy of the Ultimate Mini-Guide to Food Cost Calculation

1. Know What You Are Spending

It’s simple. You should have a system to monitor your food costs. It’s hard not to stress the importance of food cost monitoring. Knowing what you are actually paying for food on your menus is crucial.

If you don’t know for sure what a portion is costing you, how will you know if you are making any profit at all?

It’s guesswork.

If numbers go in the red, how do you know what to adjust to have all arrows pointing upwards again?

Monitoring your food cost should always be your number one priority. If you want to simplify the whole cumbersome process of doing so, you might want to look into the Apicbase food cost & margin control tool.

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>> Start automating your food cost control (and ditch those pesky spreadsheets)

2. Portion Control

Make sure portions aren’t too big.

‘No sh*t, Sherlock?!’

Hold on, hear us out.

First of all, portion control is massively important if you’re looking at reducing food cost. When the portions you serve differ from the portions costed in your recipes, there is no way to compare actual and ideal food cost.

In other words, you won’t know if you are successful at keeping food cost down.

Still, a portion can also be too big. Business owners often are terrified of reducing the size of their most popular menu items.

But when portions are too big and plates come back half full, waste goes up and money goes in the bin.

Or people start sharing dishes. Instead of two entrees, they order only one. Your check amount goes down.

By reducing portions and prices, many restaurateurs have successfully grown their revenue.

Margins go up because the selling price isn’t decreased in proportion to the portion size.

Also, customers tend to order more when your portions aren’t excessively large.

The number of items sold per ticket goes up, as does your turnover.

3. Pre-portion In Mise-en-place

This little tip ties in neatly with the preceding one.

Like we said: aim for portion control, but admittedly, it’s an easy mark to miss.

In the heat of the moment, when ovens are blazing and the ticket machine is spewing relentlessly, it’s understandable that servings start to vary in quantity.

Understandable but not acceptable in terms of reducing food cost. It’s best to anticipate this problem in prep. When organising your mise en place, don’t rely on gut feeling.

Make sure recipes are followed religiously and, measuring cups, ladles, scoops and scales are used. It is the only way to guarantee those quantities are respected throughout production.

So what about service? You know: when are ovens blazing and the ticket machine is red hot…

What you should do is pre-portion ingredients before service starts. By doing so you ensure quantities are maintained even when the pressure is high. This way no one needs to worry about portion size.

Even the new recruit with the nervous look on his face.

4. Keep Your Menus Focussed

Don’t offer more menu items than your customer base demands. Keep track of your sales mix and check whether or not a dish is worth keeping on the menu.

The more menu items you have the higher the risk of wasting. So keep your menu focused. Menu engineering will save you a lot of money.

It will simplify prepping, procurement and inventory, and ultimately keep food costs under control. Apicbase integrates with your ePOS and offers a complete sales analysis.

The system shows you which recipes are profitable and popular.

5. Buy At The Best Price And Be Creative

Convenience is an easy trap to fall in: ordering the same products from the same supplier over and over again. Don’t get us wrong, the relationship with your supplier will influence food costs greatly in a positive way. We dig deeper into that next.

On the other hand, prices vary constantly. Better stay vigilant. Convenience can be a burden on profitability.

Also, even though a previous chef swore a recipe is impossible to make without a certain brand or ingredient, often it doesn’t make a difference at all.

Don’t be afraid to experiment and look for the best solution in terms of quality and costs. Creativity is the bread and butter of every restaurant.

If you want to make things easier for yourself, the restaurant procurement solution in Apicbase makes it easy to order what you need, when you need it.

6. Love Your Supplier

Invest in a strong relationship with suppliers. Don’t take them for granted.

If you find yourself torn between the stove and the spreadsheet and simply don’t have the time to keep a constant eye on costs. You want a supplier by your side that says ‘look man, turbot is delicious, but I can’t give you a good price today. Why not try brill instead?’.

Knowing your suppliers have your best interests at heart will save you time and money.

If suppliers know you are committed to working with them, they, in turn, will be more invested in your business.

When it’s time to negotiate or re-negotiate product pricing a relationship built on trust will help you get the best deal.

And do ask to negotiate prices. Specifically when your business is growing.

Here are two ways to improve your deal with suppliers (and help you to bring food cost down).

• Ask for a volume report

The report will most likely show that the volume ordered goes up over time, because of extra business at a location or because new outlets are added. It’s possible that prices aren’t keeping track with this growth. The volume report offers a solid base to re-negotiate a deal.

• Intensify procurement

Optimizing deliveries can make procurement more cost-effective for both you and your suppliers.

Discuss ways to make deliveries more efficient and ask what the effect of your actions would be on the price of delivered goods.

Fewer deliveries also save your team a lot of time. The Apicbase procurement tool helps you get the necessary insights for optimal ordering.

7. Working From Scratch, Is It Worth The Effort?

Working from scratch is great, but isn’t always the best way forward in terms of profitability.

Milling your own flour and churning your own butter is amazing, and can reduce food cost down to 10%, but the labour costs will skyrocket.

Consider all your options. There will probably be an incredible local supplier, who might be doing a better job and offering a great price.

Monitoring costs is crucial throughout the entire food process.

8. Reduce No Shows

Don’t prepare food for people that never arrive. That statement doesn’t need much explaining.

Keeping food and labour costs in line is a lot easier if you know how many plates you will be serving. Reservations help you with planning the mise en place and procurement.

No shows, however, are ruining the party.

Whatever the reason may be — miscommunication, an emergency, forgetfulness or a lack of courtesy — diners not showing up for bookings have a big impact on revenue and food costs. Especially if you have extra stock in and staff on hand.

A no show rate of 10 per cent is realistic in the hospitality business. Tackling this problem helps to keep food costs down greatly.

Here are 5 ways to reduce no shows:

• Work with a reservation platform like Eatapp or Tablebooker

Some no shows are due to a miscommunication between staff and customers. A digital table booking platform checks and double-checks. This reduces the number of involuntary no shows greatly.

• If you have your own platform, or only take bookings over the phone, then make sure you take down all relevant data:
• First name
• Last name
• Number of guests
• Phone number
• Email address

Being accurate in taking down details shows you are taking the reservation serious.

• Consider asking for credit card details for online bookings. Bookings made over the phone are, in general, less problematic for no shows.
• For big bookings asking for a reservation fee helps to reduce the risk of a no show. Reassure clients by making it very clear that the reservation fee will be deducted from the bill afterwards.
• Simply ask. Ask customers to let you know if they can’t make it. Add an extra line in the confirmation email and make sure front-of-staff mentions it every time they write down a booking.

Send a reminder email two days before the booking.

9. Waste As Little As Possible

Makes perfect sense in theory but making it an everyday reality requires a disciplined team, well-documented protocols and a strong leader as head chef.

Reduce food waste by using everything (or as much as possible). To do so, you have to think outside the box:

• Trimmings of a fish filet are great for making fish pies or fishcakes.
• Beef scraps get reduced to sausages and burgers.
• Peel as little as possible. Serve vegetables whole if possible.
• Use preservation and fermentation techniques to utilise all of the vegetable by-products. Or boil them down for hours so all the natural sugars caramelise into a delicious syrup.
• And of course: soups. Soups are the ultimate way to recuperate oddly shaped vegetables and other things that you might otherwise throw out.

Food waste management is important when it comes to keeping food cost under control. And it is not about keeping tabs on the trimmings alone.

We have written a full breakdown of how smart operators drive down costs through strong food waste management.

In conclusion

Food cost is one of the biggest costs for restaurants and foodservice businesses.

Luckily it is a manageable cost.

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>> Start automating your food cost control (and ditch those pesky spreadsheets)

What is most important is to monitor your food costs.

Calculate your ideal cost per dish or menu and compare it with the actual costs.

If your food cost variance is too high investigate and take action.

Here is everything you need to know about the 7 causes of food cost variance between actual and ideal food costs.