Running a restaurant business may seem easy from outside, but you must know that it incurs various expenses before yielding desirable results. Of them, food cost tends to be the main concern for all restaurateurs all over the globe. Everywhere the foodservice business has to deal with rising food prices. That being the case, it becomes essential to focus on portion control for any restaurant.
What’s and why’s of portion control
Portion control refers to the quantity and number of ingredients that go into creating a dish and serving it. Maintaining portions is also inevitable to ensure consistent taste, quality, and quantity for utmost customer satisfaction. If a restaurant wants to be successful, it has to control portions to keep a check on the food cost. It not only can bring a competitive edge but improved margins also. If you succeed in doing this, you can benefit hugely.
- It can save you the trouble of losing out on food costs and margins due to a simple change in the portion size.
- It can help check wastage and inflated food costs by helping you to serve the right size that customers can eat and enjoy.
- It can ensure consistency in quality and consistency in quantity across different dishes for the franchise and standalone restaurants. Both overserving and underserving are not good in terms of expenses and customer satisfaction.
There are ways to tackle the issue of food cost and portion sizes. If you attempt doing it manually, it can be a headache. You will have to calculate the costs of all the items to decide its menu price. For example, you can think of a cheeseburger. Right from a bun, mayonnaise, onion slice, tomato slices, meat, mustard, and ketchup to pickle slices and American cheese, you will need to calculate the price of every ingredient used in it. The calculation doesn’t stop here, though. Anyway, it can be a time-consuming process.
You can avoid it by opting for a reliable food costing software. The cloud-based online apps can help you estimate costs by portions and use the right measurement to get a standardized recipe.
Having standard recipes is critical for the restaurant to attain success. Your chefs can create the same dish referring to the previous data that contains all the details of the types and quantity of ingredients used in a portion. As a result, the risk of serving less or more, or adding or missing an item also gets eliminated. And, since it tells how much quantity and ingredient to use in a particular dish, you can easily manage food costing and quality.
The food expense apps have revolutionized the way restaurants and other foodservice businesses operate today. They have removed the layer of tension and stress associated with one of the most common and expensive areas of business, which is food. If you also desire to make your journey effortless and smooth in the food industry, try one of these apps. The ease of use, feature richness, and execution can make it a dependable resource for you.