Identify areas affecting your cost of food production

South-east Asia and Singapore are well known for our food scene. Locals and tourists enjoy the many cuisines and hospitality shown. Bringing home with them many happy experiences and memories.

But with increasing competition, shortage of skilled labour and government safety regulations tightening, food business owners face pressure to remain competitive and profitable.

One big area business owners can look into, is to take costs out of your kitchen.

This short course will help you gain knowledge and practical methods to take costs out of your kitchen.

 At the end of the module, business owners will be better equipped to make changes to influence costs factors affecting your kitchen operation. Effective changes can help you gain on your profit margin.

The menu determine the customers you want to serve. Which type of food will attract them to your outlet and help to retain them long-term.

You want to write a menu that is consistent in projecting your business to your target audience. 

Customers remember and relates to your outlet through the dishes you bring to them. When your business understand the taste and needs of your audience, the better you are able to retain them. A well-crafted menu is about the quality of the food served, hardly about the number of dishes on offer. 

  • determine how you want your customer to recognize your outlet by,
  • when they come across your outlet physically or search online.
  • With a focused menu, you can better allocate your team for each meal periods and preparation during slower periods. 

pairings.pdf

Does your menu contain more than 30 items filling up more than 3 or more pages. Present day diners like me, have short memory spans. I forget what is on page 1, when I flip over to page 3.

What we want to present is a menu that is able to capture your guests' attention and help them to deicide within 5 minutes.

In all my previous employment, I have in each outlet, a menu of 25-30 items from appetizer to dessert. I change my menu every 3-6 months to keep my regular guests interested. When you have a smaller menu, you normally need to prepare less garnishes.

In one of my previous workplace, we are known for our dinner grill items. we have 12 cuts of beef, lamb and spring chicken. we prepare daily rotation of  side dishes of 1 starch and 3 vegetables. We only need to buy 4 ingredients. combine with 5 sauces that our guests can choose from, we offer our guests more that 40 choices.

We are recognized as an upmarket dining venue, offering variety and more importantly, quality and value for money meals.

Recipes are important Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in the kitchen. It help you calculate how much you need to buy, to produce, to cater for the number of guests coming into your outlet for the day.

Recipes also acts as a method to forecast how much of each ingredient you need to have in hand, in the event of a sudden increase in bookings and walk-in customers.

Take this scenario. today is Monday morning, you need to plan for this coming long weekend of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. you will need to plan for 4 days of purchases, when your suppliers resume delivery on Tuesday.

Which leads us onto the point of portion size, a dish in a set menu of 3 courses will have lesser than an ala carte order. example, a salmon dish in a set menu will consist of 80-120grams of salmon + 30grams of vegetables and 30 grams of potato or rice. Against an ala carte portion of 150-200gm of salmon, 50grams of vegetables and 50gms of potato or rice.

If your dishes are of sharing portions, how many people is one dish able to cater for. Example, a plate of deep-fried squid with lemon mayonnaise ideally is good for 2 people. Guests can order other dishes or one more plate of the same deep-fried squid, if they want more. In this case, you are reducing potential over-production and wastage from you kitchen. 

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