A restaurant is neither a thing nor a structure nor a group of people and certainly not a recipe, concept, or a brand. It is a process that brings products and people together to create an enjoyable experience for your customers and profits for the owners. To deliver that enjoyable experience and at the same time bring in profits for the company, basic controls need to be in place. Few such controls are discussed below:
- Inferior Yields – Inferior yields can result when detailed product specifications haven’t been developed or aren’t used consistently. If you don’t tell your vendors exactly the grade, type, size or brand of each product ordered, you might get products of inferior quality, which affect your food taste and consistency, and can also result in higher wastage and shrinkage.
- Appropriate quality – It is also important to choose the appropriate quality and grade of each product considering its intended use. For example, you spend the extra money to buy the high grade, large sized, branded lemons that are squeezed in the kitchen for batch recipes, when a lower-quality, no-name lemon would work just as well and save money too.
- Padded orders – The staff or manager responsible for receiving the goods at a restaurant must always tally the received goods with the purchase order and not accept a padded order. For example, if 2 cases of lettuce were ordered and 4 are being delivered, the 2 cases extra should be returned. If you however accept, it is possible that you have overbought. Chances are good that at least a portion of that excess lettuce will be lost because of poor portion control (because there is more lettuce on hand to use), spoilage and/or waste.
- Over- portioning – Prep or line cooks can become excessively generous or careless and put too much food on the plate. While consistent over portioning is bad enough and leads to excess food costs, what’s worse is to portion in an inconsistent manner. It is the surest way to turn off even your faithful regular customers.
- Inventory Levels – The amount of money a restaurant will make depends, to a substantial degree, on how well it manages its food inventory. The plan is to lessen the food inventory and maintain a lower, yet adequate amount, employees have less product at their disposal, and they tend to do a better job of handling and portioning what they have. This results in less wastage, less spoilage and it often leads to fewer losses due to theft, which causes food cost to go down. Evidently, there is a limit to how far you can reduce food inventory but getting rid of as much of the excess as possible is the goal. For full-menu operations, the food inventory usually optimizes at six to seven days of food on hand. For Limited menu and QSRs, three to five days of food on hand generally is considered adequate but not excessive. Where feasible, lowering inventory levels by two or three days can result in food cost reductions equal to 2-3 percentages and sometimes even more. Sometimes, operators track their inventory levels by category. Sometimes, operators track inventory of key products on a daily basis. Think of inventory in the same way you think of CASH.
At Fruxient Accounting, we have been providing bookkeeping services since 2015. Our exceptional and integrated procedures along with a deep comprehension of Restaurant accounting allows us to delight Restaurant owners by providing comprehensive accounting and strategic services.
Our Value Proposition:
- Superior Knowledge
- Accurate and Timely reporting
- Better cost control
- Minimize revenue leakage
- Maximize profits
- Help in process improvement
And all of this with 50% savings on bookkeeping costs.