When it comes to running your own food establishment, costs and budgets have extremely thin margins for error. Restaurant owners have to ensure they are up-to-date on food costs and rent costs, and they must know how much they can charge for their dishes without turning customers away to lower-priced businesses.

For that reason, cuts often have to be made. For example, it’s great if you can offer an exotic catch of the day as your dish, but can you reasonably afford to source it? After you’ve drawn up the initial business plan to work out your ingoings and outgoings, here are some tips and tricks for managing the costs of your food ingredients.

Waste

When it comes to restaurants, waste is a big money drainer. Whether it’s making too much food and having it left over at the end of the night or even just putting too much on your customers’ plates and watching sadly as it’s scraped into the bin after they’ve paid up and left, waste is an unnecessary use of your resources, and the costs can build up. For this reason, it’s important to control portion sizes when serving up dishes, and also to ensure you order wisely, particularly when it comes to stocking perishable ingredients.

In addition, it’s crucial to make creative use of food that is about to become unusable, either by rearranging your menu or by making better use of the food in question and not wasting any of it. When putting the food away, you’ll need to ensure it’s stored properly. Several commercial catering suppliers, such as 247cateringsupplies, can provide the right equipment to ensure your food stays good for longer.

Use your front-of-house servers

When it comes to promoting and pushing certain dishes, never underestimate the influential power of your front-of-house servers. A simple recommendation of a particular dish can result in a huge increase in sales of a product you need to use.

Avoid increasing your prices

As any well-established business will agree, raising your prices across the board should only be used as a last resort. Sure, it might increase your profits in the short term, but exploiting your customers will reflect badly on your business and may eventually drive them to a competitor with better prices.