With food costs rising every week are your restaurants profits taking a hit? Almost every day there is something in the news about the price of something going up. Beef, pork, dairy, and coffee are all going up. As a restaurant owner, what is your strategy to handling these increases?
Some chains will be raising prices, others will not. What will work for you? Put yourself in the consumers spot. Gas prices continue to go up, and the economic recovery is in question as for producing results. At the end of the day, there is less money available for discretionary spending. The impact of this appears to be evident in the continuing decline in restaurant traffic.
So, what will you do in your restaurant? Many restaurants have a strategy for dealing with these issues, but more often restaurants do not have a strategy for their menu and marketing of their menu. Every day, the profits are being squeezed, are you one of these restaurants? What is your strategy?
Could a 4% profit improvement plan benefit your restaurant? Where would you start, what would you do. For me, I often start with the end in mind. If I want to hit that profit improvement goal, what must be done? Outlined below are some steps you might want to
Menu Profitability
consider:
- How often do you take inventory in your restaurant
- Develop a costing strategy for items on your menu.
- Implement a portion control process
- Utilize data from your POS System for a menu engineering analysis
- Design your menu to optimize profit potential.
- Utilize weekly or daily specials for margin improvement.
- Are you priced competitively in the marketplace.
As you can see, raising prices is not the main topic of this approach, but these steps can add to your bottom line. As for timing, the summer often is the best opportunity to much of this work to prepare your business for the upcoming holiday season. Will you be ready to improve your bottom line this year?
CORE Restaurant Marketing has over 30 years of experience in the food industry, with a mission to help restaurants improve their revenues. To learn more about how CORE Restaurant Marketing can bring value to the restaurant industry, download the Free Whitepaper “Key Drivers to Restaurant Profitability”.
Joe Welsh
Joe Welsh is a Partner with CORE Restaurant Marketing Solutions which is a national restaurant marketing agency focusing on helping restaurants improve their sales and profitability. Joe has worked with restaurants on a local and national basis. He has developed and implemented programs for US Foodservice, Gordon Foods and Performance Food Group. Joe has his Master’s Degree in Food Marketing from St. Joseph’s University and over 30 years’ experience in the Food Industry covering both the retail and foodservice sectors.
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