For catering companies, restaurants are the smallest profit unit. Optimizing restaurant menu structure, reducing restaurant labour costs, and increasing profits of catering stores are obviously the simplest and crudest measures to deal with the current catering dilemma.
5 Tips for Optimizing Your Menu Structure
As the saying goes, if you want to have a hot business, start with the menu and adjust the structure of the dishes. The menu is the guide for the entire business structure of the restaurant, which is directly related to customer consumption and the turnover of the store.
At the same time, the number of dishes on the menu determines how many people the restaurant needs, the kitchen space, and the operating efficiency of the restaurant… Therefore, high-level catering operations must start with a high-quality menu.
Especially in the face of huge challenges such as the epidemic and rising prices, growth is the biggest pain point for every catering person, and menu optimization and operation have become compulsory courses for catering professionals.
So, how can caterers optimize the menu structure?
1. The menu category should be complete, and the package structure should be optimized
Generally speaking, the menu structure of a restaurant needs to include food and beverages, hot and cold, dry and wet, sweet and salty, and a good mix of various flavours to meet the comprehensive needs of consumers.
Secondly, at the level of menu structure and layout, each catering brand menu has its own product price range for different consumption scenarios. Catering companies should optimize the corresponding core dish package combinations according to different target dining scenarios so as to form high consumption peaks.
For example, for the Spring Festival banquet, consumers are generally not sensitive to prices, but the customer base includes the elderly and children. Therefore, catering companies should enlarge and combine high-value products on the menu.
At the same time, the products should not be too spicy or heavy and should take into account the nutrition and the taste of the food, etc.; For the current daily white-collar workers, the dishes with high-cost performance should be highlighted as drainage dishes. The dishes should be sufficient in quantity and addictive in taste to attract customers to order.
2. The best way to reduce the price of dishes is to quietly increase the price
As consumers’ consumption desires decline, price cuts have become a common action of many catering companies. Some catering brands directly expand the price range and introduce low-priced products to cover more consumer groups.
More catering brands are starting to bring down menu prices. However, it is a very dangerous thing to drop the price of the dishes. Because the catering companies themselves have reduced dividends in the current predicament, survival is difficult, and the prices of dishes continue to drop.
If there is no way to increase the consumption frequency by a large amount, the gross profit will only continue to decline. Gross profit decreases, net profit decreases, and it will be even more difficult for restaurants to survive.
The best way to reduce the price of dishes is that even if the price of the food has been reduced, the gross profit is rising. This requires the restaurant to have a way to reduce the price of dishes. The restaurant can reduce the price of dishes in disguise by introducing new products or looking for flat substitutes for product materials.
3. The pricing of signature dishes should go towards “high gross profit”
Menu dishes are generally divided into signature dishes, drainage dishes, and so on. What is the signature dish? Every restaurant has its own signature dishes, which differentiates one restaurant from another.
Therefore, the restaurant’s signature dishes generally go “high”, with high prices and high gross profits, which make them the profitable core dishes of the restaurant. Draining dishes are cost-effective products, usually appetizers or snacks in restaurants.
After the epidemic, when the ingredients are squeezed, the restaurant can also set the backlog of ingredients as drainage dishes, appropriately increase the ratio of drainage dishes, reduce inventory while attracting customers, and improve cash flow turnover.
4. Combination of dishes with “high profit and fast production”
In order to reduce the time for consumers to choose, many restaurants put a mark next to the dishe’s names to differentiate the main signature dish of the restaurant, the most popular champion, the chef’s recommendation, must-eat food, etc.
It is not recommended to give consumers too many choices. The correct way is to combine the main dishes, dishes with high gross profit margins, high-value dishes, and the fastest products. Dishes with aesthetic features can make customers feel that dining is cost-effective, dishes that are delivered quickly can improve restaurant satisfaction, and dishes with high gross profit can increase the overall revenue of the store.
Such a combination can save consumers’ ordering time and increase the overall restaurant turnover. Not to forget online catering menus as they are equally important and can be optimized simultaneously.
Measures for restaurants to reduce costs
In addition to optimizing the restaurant menu structure and increasing efficiency, cost reduction is also the core part of improving the profitability of catering stores. in terms of rent costs.
Since the epidemic has continued to repeat this year, many businesses in the catering industry have launched calls for a rent reduction. However, substantial rent reduction can be obtained in addition to policy support for state-owned properties.
Other commercial entities are also facing difficulties such as shrinking profits and rising vacancy rates. It is very difficult to reduce rent. Therefore, the core of the real cost reduction of the current restaurant is more at the human level. How can restaurants save labour costs? The restaurant reduces labour costs, mainly for the kitchen and the front hall. First, the kitchen level. The key to kitchen labour cost is product structure and product composition.
There are a lot of cooking dishes in restaurants, and more chefs are needed. If the fried dishes on the menu are replaced with stews and steamed dishes, more skilled chefs can be saved. Of course, it is also a good way to introduce automated machines such as smart cooking machines. In addition, the back kitchen can also rationally design the positioning of equipment, tools, and food packaging materials to minimize the number of steps in the production process and make the operation the most convenient, reducing the meal delivery time during peak periods and improving meal delivery efficiency.
Secondly, take the restaurant partition as an example. When we want a service employee to manage 50 seats in the restaurant, these 50 seats should be placed in one work area when designing the front hall, so that the staff can complete See these fifty tables. In addition, with the popularization of online payment, the position of the cashier is no longer necessary and can be canceled directly.