Food Aficionado Smart Brief: Volume 7
Thank you for tuning in for another edition of The Food Aficionado Smart Brief. In this ever-changing environment that we face in the food industry, we should always be on the lookout for improvements in efficiency, quality, and ultimately making or saving money. Today, we want to focus on the latter, in hopes that we can help save some amazing businesses some cash!
How You Can Reduce Some Business Costs $$$
1. Consolidate Your Menu Large menus are sometimes difficult to manage, but having options does have its benefits. If you do want to have a large menu with lots of options for your customers, aim to have dishes that share some ingredients. Having ingredients cross over among menu items will reduce the likelihood of food going bad leading to waste and dollars down the drain. However, a study by Colombia University showed that customers prefer smaller menus because it makes their decision process easier. The larger the menu, the more “diner confusion” can torment the customer.
Limit Waste - Save Money
Customers Prefer an Easy Decision Process
2. Acclimate Customers To Online Ordering Online ordering holds an abundance of benefits for restaurants, especially as time continues forward. A few quick benefits include less overhead in store, order process efficiency, adds to your online presence for cheap or free marketing, and offer your customer convenience. The one major reason why online ordering is a must today, GROW YOUR BOTTOM LINE. Not only are more customers going to be ordering as they scroll looking for food, but also a survey conducted by Restolabs found that orders placed online are 20% larger on average. Increasing your average ticket sale can lead to your bottom line growing drastically.
In 2019, only 3% of restaurants offered online ordering. Heading into 2022, 45% of restaurants offer online ordering.
Digital ordering and delivery have grown 300% faster than dine-in traffic since 2014.
3. Use Multiple Distributors Working with multiple distributors can be a tricky road to navigate, however in today's world, everything is a marketplace. Managing relationships is key in this scenario, thus maintaining effective communication will ultimately lead to success. Having multiple distributors allows you to check weekly for price updates and truly see if you can receive quality products for a cheaper price. In turn, this does force competition into the market, generally leading the prices to lean in your favor as the distributors fight to get the deal. There are sometimes loyalty questions around using another distributor, yet everyone is still trying to get the best deal and there is simply no shame in that.
Managing Relationships and Effective Communication
Create a Competitive Marketplace to Drive Prices in Your Favor
To Summarize: Although you don't have to implement all of these concepts, it is important to at least have them in mind. Pivoting or even just improving business operations should always be ravaging through owners' thoughts. Saving money is one thing that we are sure most business owners would love to accomplish. Consolidating your menu and using multiple distributors will both help your overall costs. Creating an online store for your customers will be a near necessary step to take, if you haven't already. However, a seamless online ordering system will not only save you money, but also tap into a massive market that is growing everyday.
