Another Three Ways Restaurants are Dealing with Higher Food Costs
A while back we put together some ideas about how to deal with rising food costs. Well...the situation hasn’t gotten any better since then. Supply chain issues from COVID now are joined by the war in the Ukraine and avian flu to continue to push food costs higher. You are seeing average wholesale food costs up 24% Year-over-Year!
We just read an incredibly insightful article by Bret Thorn at Restaurant Hospitality that has a number of great examples of how chefs are continuing to adjust their businesses to navigate the challenges of higher food costs and labor costs. Here’s a summary with some additional thoughts.
Simplify
A simple, rotating menu gives you more flexibility, which is always helpful when dealing with high food costs.
One of the most common ways to deal with higher food costs is to simplify the menu and therefore the number of SKUs you are dealing with. This can result in less labor going into each dish, give you fewer products that you have to keep track of cost trends, and just simplify overall operations. If less labor is going into each dish, can you look at more basic ingredients that may require some prep but cost significantly less? For example, a raw primal cut of beef instead of something that’s pre-prepared.
A simpler menu works well with a regular rotation to provide options for your customers. This also lends itself to seasonality of ingredients and the ability to modify ingredients based on which categories may be the best deal, another great way to deal with the current food cost trends. Rotation gives you more flexibility, which is always helpful when dealing with high food costs.
Cross-utilize
This is nothing new to cooking and restaurants, but sometimes the old tricks are the best. By cross-utilizing ingredients across multiple dishes and figuring out how to use every last bit of a product, you are able to optimize your yield and manage those higher costs. A little bit of upfront thought of how to maximize the ability to cross-utilize can pay dividends in the long run.
It is a lot easier to plan your cross-utilization when you simplify the menu. You can see how these tactics can help support each other.
Find Local Options
In the past, local options may have tended to be higher cost. That is often no longer the case.
The continued increases in costs from larger distributors combined with more frequent product outs are helping to close the gap with local product options. In the past, local options may have tended to be higher cost. That is often no longer the case. Identifying your local options can be a great backup if a regular product is not available, or potentially be an even better primary option. Especially if the product maximizes the opportunities to cross-utilize. Again, this is something that is easier to do with a simpler menu.
As always, you need to decide what techniques are the right fit for you, your business, and your customer. Hopefully these ideas can get your juices flowing on things that might work best for you. The more tools in your toolbox, the better prepared you are to deal with the food costs challenges that don’t appear to going away anytime soon.