e-Tools of the Trade

Food Cost Solutions By Peter Langlois

Here are a few of my favorite food cost solutions. These should be standard operating procedure (S.O.P.), but if you’re off track, consider implementing these.

1. “Lock your doors!” It’s pretty obvious that locking your kitchen door is a must. Unfortunately, employee theft is perhaps the number one cause of high food cost, so common sense dictates you control traffic in/out of the kitchen. An even more important door to lock, however, is your office door! Lock it from the outside and open it as seldom as possible. The vast majority of your time should be spent managing your employees, being visible and active in the kitchen, dining room and bar. There is no substitute in our business for physical presence, being face-to-face with all your people, including your guests. I’ve never met a manager who can coach his staff or control his costs from the office!

2. “Lean your inventory!” I’m convinced that fat food costs are the result of having too much inventory on hand. Think of your inventory as a tube of toothpaste. At the beginning of the month when the tube is full and the cap is taken off, a ton of paste comes shooting out, way more than you can reasonably use to brush your teeth. But, you don’t stuff the excess back into the tube, you simply wash it down the drain. Contrast this with the end of the month and allegorically the end of your toothpaste tube. Now you’ve got a gadget on the end and you’re trying to squeeze out just barely enough paste to do the job. It’s the same with your food inventory. When it’s high, workers have little regard and use more than is needed. To reduce your inventory, drop next week’s purchasing budget by ten percent. Look at stock intelligently to determine where to cut, but do it!

3. “Protect your proteins and cheeses.” Keep all full cases under lock and key and get a rolling cart to store all protein and cheese that has been taken out of master cases. Put a separate bar and lock on the cart and issue protein and cheese twice a day (three times if you’re doing breakfast). When you demonstrate to your employees that you regard this merchandise as valuable and you are safeguarding it, you’ll send a powerful message. These are your key food cost drivers.

4. “Re-calibrate and use your ounce and pound scales, and give your employees the tools to portion according to recipes.” If you’re not spot-checking merchandise as it arrives, you’re in food cost denial. When’s the last time you weighed a 50 lb. case of bakers? When the last time you dumped a box and checked the count? Have you weighed any portion control steaks, chops, chicken breasts, etc? Why not? Are you providing your staff with sharp knives? Did you know that the yield on products falls when your knives are dull? How about scoops, spoons and ladles? Are you asking servers to put one ounce of dressing on a salad using a four-ounce ladle? Wonder what the result might be there?

5. “Hit the floor!” Start checking server tickets to see if soft drinks, coffees and teas are being rung up and charged to your guests. These items have very low food costs (very high profits) and servers seemingly think they can throw those in for guests and get bigger tips. What they’re doing is hurting both your revenue and cost lines at the same time.

6. “Reconcile your sales mix with your inventory before the end of each shift and find out from staff why the numbers don’t add up.” Finding out after they leave is closing the gate after the horse is out of the barn.

7. “Show me the money-show me your standardized, costed recipes!” You must have several Recipe Manuals with recipes inside plastic sleeves available and in every work station in the kitchen. Since customers value consistency above any else you do, you need to set the example by insisting that recipes are followed exactly. This is not going to happen without Manuals being available for every employee. Keeping your recipes a secret from your employees is bad business!8. “Let’s weigh in!” When I was the Ops Manager for Spats, a rib joint, one of my general managers (who had a food cost issue) told me that the guy portioning ribs was an old hand: “You know he can just eyeball those full and half orders. It’s amazing! He doesn’t need a scale.” Really? On average his 8 ounce portions were 10 ounces and his 12 ounce portions were 14 ounces when we spot-checked them with a scale. So, on half-orders our meat cost was 25 percent high (2 divided by 8) and full orders were over16.6 percent (2 divided by 12). If you are portioning in your operation but not checking behind those doing the work, your food cost will suffer.

9. “Count Your Blessings.” Count your inventory privately before whoever usually does it. Chances are you’ll have some differences to reconcile. One clue here is to take all master cases off the shelves to be sure they contain what’s on the box label. We promoted a manager once partially based upon his great food cost numbers. When we brought in another manager to check his ending inventory, we were surprised to find that a number of boxes in the freezer were empty, yet were being counted as full when food cost was calculated. Inventory padding to “hit the numbers” is unfortunately a common way of cheating to make bonuses.

10. “Dew Drop Inn!” Surprise people by showing up at the craziest hours. You’ll be surprised what crazy things might be going on. Do the mice play when the cat’s away? Remember that old military expression (adopted by Marriott years ago): “Expect what you inspect!” Is it healthy for staff to think you just might show up any time? You bet! This one is mostly about keeping the honest people honest.

11. “Picture this!” Every item should be pictured in your expo station. This insures that everyone checks the item’s presentation against a standard that doesn’t change. A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

12. “Recalculate your Q factor for all recipes!” What is your Q factor? It’s all the things you give away to customers without charging them, but still must be take into account when calculating your food cost. Here are a few examples: salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, bread baskets, sides of sliced garlic, extra lemon wedges, Grey Poupon, A-1, Heinz 57, sugar (packets), bar fruit, etc. How do I calculate that? Take one week’s invoices and identify all of these giveaways. Then add them up and divide by your weekly customer count. Generally, Q factors range from $.25 to $.75. Add your Q factor to each recipe. Then divide by your projected food cost (expressed as a decimal) to estimate your selling price.

I hope these help in your efforts to lower food cost. As I tell so many of my students who are studying to be chefs: If you want to cook tomorrow, you need to make money today!