Restaurants operate on thin margins, and every cost-saving measure can make all the difference to a struggling restaurant’s bottom line. This was true before COVID-19, and it is even more pronounced now, as most restaurants have closed or pivoted to carry out and delivery service only. With shortened hours and no in-house customers, this is the perfect time to take a detailed assessment of kitchen costs and find places to cut expenses. Doing so will help ensure that your restaurant is set up for success when it’s able to reopen.
A point of sale system is an essential tool in accurately tracking and analyzing kitchen costs and expenses.
Food
Using your point of sale system, look at the past year of food sales. (Analyzing a full year will account for seasonality, holidays, and other annual trends.) Compare sales against inventory. What items sold well? What was less popular? Which food items went to waste? Consider revising the menu, removing those unpopular items and adding new offerings similar to those that are more well-liked.
If you find yourself needing to cut food costs, consider the following:
- Adding more low-cost food items (i.e. pasta) to offset the costs of higher-cost items
- Controlling portion sizes
- Minimizing food waste
- Limiting employee food consumption
Equipment
Now, compare food trends against kitchen equipment. Is there any specialty equipment that isn’t used often? Is there anything new that you should acquire to better meet customers’ wants and needs? Can you restructure the kitchen environment to create greater efficiency and improve customer wait times?
Certainly, there is more that goes into a kitchen budget than food and equipment. But in a post-COVID world, cutting all possible costs will be essential for restaurant survival, and this is an easy place to start.
Want to learn more about how a point of sale system could help you better track kitchen costs and expenses? Contact Retail Tech today.
Retail Tech carries a wide variety of new and refurbished point of sale hardware and equipment. We offer installation and staging, retail POS system repairs, and more. If you need help choosing a hybrid POS solution, contact our POS systems specialists for help finding the perfect point of sale solution for your retail store, restaurant or other small business.
