Do you know your numbers? Or is that someone else’s beat?
I’m always amazed at how little chefs and even managers know about the food they are serving. They may know what it is, how it’s prepared and how it’s served. But do they know the numbers? “I don’t get involved with that, I’m on the creative side”, a chef once told me.
Each dish
– What it costs?
– What it sells for?
– What is the profit margin?
– How much waste is there?
– What’s the shelf life?
– How popular is it?
Unless you know all this and are keeping tabs on these numbers on a regular basis, you could be throwing away money. If cooking is an art, running a successful restaurant is the science of knowing the numbers and acting on that information. You may produce the most fantastic food, but unless you get the costs right, you are doomed.
A little real-life story diversion
When I had my first food business, I did outside catering. It was very successful, and I sometimes needed help. Enter Siobhan, a lovely Irish woman, a Cordon Bleu cook and a fantastic asset. Except, she didn’t have a commercial bone in her body. She created lovely dishes because she wanted to. Her husband had a good job, and food shopping was a case of driving to Waitrose and putting things in the trolley. She had no idea how much even common food items cost.
I’ve never bothered to look at prices before you made me
she said. Her first thought would be the appeal of the dish, not the cost of the ingredients or the time needed to make it. If you are producing food commercially, ie for profit, you must take all these things into account. Labour is expensive and shaving the cost of that can make a huge difference to your bottom line.
Put another way, make sure the slow, handmade way is the best option for whatever dish you are preparing. Homemade has cachet – and it can be essential – but make sure it works well for each dish in your operation.
Popular does not mean profitable
Of course, if a restaurant or café has no customers, it’s not going to make a profit. But if a place is always busy, don’t assume the opposite. A restaurant might have straight 5-star reviews, but anyone can have a popular restaurant if the prices are too low. It’s a sad fact, but some operators are so focused on the food and service being great, they forget that they need a good margin to make any money.
The menu itself
Please don’t see the menu as just a list of food choices and prices. It is so much more. It is your critical marketing asset. The menu is the tool that will either please your customers or confuse them. It could be a money-making tool if you use it properly. Your menu can be engineered and optimised to make the most profit and to keep your customers happy.
This doesn’t mean that menu engineering will help you to trick or fool your customers. Repeat customers are a restaurant’s lifeblood. We want to help you to get your menu right (optimised) and nudge customers into choosing the best option for them, so they do come back.
Food, glorious food
Some top chefs will argue that it’s only the food that matters. Nearly everyone else (well, gastro-physicists and menu optimisation copywriters) will tell them otherwise. It’s touch, it’s taste, it’s smell, it’s atmosphere, it’s sound, it’s environment. It’s on that particular day and that particular time.
Your last supper
Think about it. You were with your family or a group of friends for a meal and it was a fantastic evening. Was it just the food? Seriously, if you took everything away and just imagined the food – maybe at home on your own – was it that alone that made your evening? Of course not. The food was very good but everything else made it great.
Restaurateurs have come to understand this. From the moment your guests walk in, everything that happens to them from then on – and right until when they leave – will determine how much they enjoyed their meal. So yes, of course, the food is important, but it’s not the most important thing.
Your brand
Marketers bang on about this, but for good reason. Unless you have nailed your brand – what makes you special, what your ethos is, positioning – you can’t even start to write your menu. Because that determines things like tone of voice, design and colours, menu fonts, whether you want photos or not, what form the menu takes.
Finally, in part three, will will get round to the menu, I promise. But there is a lot to think about first.
Photo: Taken in The Wolseley, Piccadilly, London. A strong brand and a superb place to eat. With a very good menu.