What are the best ways to control food and beverage costs and prevent waste?

once you know your menu you can control the costs with measures mentioned by you but important factor is the mindset of staff, appropriate training in cost saving skills, prioritizing perishable In-Out system and of course target of profit margin in mind.

There are several angles to approach this from. I would start with: Point of Sale. Are your items priced correctly? Are your items coded correctly? Does each menu item give the servers ease of entering modifications to the orders? Next, training. If your team is not trained properly, your costs will go through the roof. With re fires, inconsistencies in serving sizes, and send backs due to confusion. Throw in proper discounting procedures, and menu knowledge…. Then move on to procurement, storage, and controls.

Meticulous inventory management is essential, as it equips you with precise knowledge of your stock levels, enabling judicious ordering—no excess, no shortfall. If you know what you have available to you you can make sure you don´t order food when you don´t need it or panic order when you have run out of something. Amidst the bustling pace, it's wise to delegate this task to dedicated personnel or adopt an automated system for seamless inventory tracking.

- For an effective exercise control over food and beverage cost could be done by knowing the "time-period", knowing the peak hours and peak days of the week. - A dedicated personnel could be employed to exercise the accurate and optimum ordering, efficient inventory, proper physical counts of stocks available and it's running time. - Over-ordering of food items during non busy days often results in wastage and spoilage which directly hit the cost, hence ordering need to be considered well before mapping. - Moreover effective and proper FIFO and lesser shelf-life food products needs to utilised optimally to avoid the risk of spoilage.

Menu Engineering: Regularly analyze your menu to identify high and low-profit items. Focus on promoting items with higher margins and consider modifying or eliminating those with lower profitability.

Managing food and beverage costs is essential for maximizing any dining operation's profitability. From personal experience, standardizing recipes and portion sizes, developing recipes that reduce waste, and training staff on proper portioning helps avoid over-serving and drives down costs. Monitoring sales velocities of menu items provides the data needed to tweak prices, portions, or preparations on slower dishes and feature popular items to increase revenues. Negotiating with suppliers for partial or flexible deliveries on perishable goods also helps our operations avoid over-ordering. Tracking waste, repurposing leftovers, and monitoring best selling dishes gives us greater control over both costs and revenues.

I agree but would also add that we need to consistently check the guest facing trash cans for food waste as well as what comes back to the dish machine. Over portioning and huge portion sizes result in food waste as well. What goes in the trash is wasted labor, facility resources, environmental emissions throughout the supply chain and your location. We need to confront how much people can actually consume in one setting.

Daily Specials: Utilize daily specials to use up ingredients that are close to their expiration dates. This can help reduce waste and add variety to your menu

Standardizing recipes is crucial for controlling ingredient costs and preventing food waste in restaurant kitchens. Once recipes are set, you should also establish clear portioning guidelines. Using standardized measuring tools like scaled cups and spoons, portioning scales, and clearly marked scoops ensures each menu item is plated consistently without relying on eyeballing by staff. Proper portioning prevents both underserving customers and over-serving ingredients, thereby improving cost control and satisfaction.

Properly tested and accepted recipes are perhaps the most significant contributor to controlling costs. This is critical for portion control. Recipes are the blueprint for the materials and also the “manufacturing “ process of the goods being sold, including properly measured amounts- these amounts represent the costs of goods sold. Training is a big part of achieving expected costs through portioning but also supervision. The supervision of processes occurring within an environment with a degree of simultaneity- (where production and delivery are happening at the same time) has been largely lost in most operations. Line employees should not expect an autonomous work environment and supervisors must supervise.

Regular Audits: Conduct regular financial audits to track your food and beverage costs. Compare actual costs with budgeted costs to identify discrepancies and take corrective action.

Here are some key factors in order to control and prevent waste 1. Cost-Plus Pricing 2. Value-Based Pricing 3. Competitive Pricing 4. Dynamic Pricing 5. Bundle Pricing 6. Psychological Pricing 7. Menu Engineering 8. Promotional Pricing 9. Tiered Pricing 10. Contribution Margin Pricing

Sustainable Practices: Implement sustainable practices, such as composting or recycling, to minimize the environmental impact of waste and attract eco-conscious customers.

Quality is a significant driver of profitability (and loss)in food service businesses. With profit margins of around 5%, a quality issue that results in a dish being sent back or rejected at the pass is disastrous. With a plate cost of $10, a business must generate $200 in sales to recover that $10 inventory expense. Think about that- for one plate, that could easily represent an entire meal service for 2-3 people. If that happens several times per service, then forget about survival. I will refer back to my other comment about supervision. Line staff must be supervised actively and trained “in-service” incessantly.

Reducing food waste is critical for restaurants aiming to cut costs and boost sustainability. A viable strategy is partnering with a food waste app enabling surplus edible food to be resold instead of discarded. One such app restaurants in Hong Kong should consider is Phenix. Phenix is an app launched by OnTheList and French startup Phenix. It allows Hong Kong food vendors to list and sell excess edible food on the app at steep discounts. This lets restaurants earn from food that would otherwise be wasted. Consumers get bargain prices for preventing landfill. Through this model, Phenix slashes food waste while benefitting vendors and buyers.

Kitchen Efficiency: Optimize kitchen workflows to minimize errors and waste during food preparation. Proper training and organization in the kitchen can significantly reduce food wastage.

PURCHASING, RECIEVING, FOOD FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION IS THE PLACE TO START. The standards by which you educate your staff to handle the products.

Creating and monitoring a profitable menu implies close analysis on its items. I believe it is important to have a report on sales and profitability of each and every item in the menu, as well as identify the items with growth potential, both in terms of quantity as well as margin. Consequently, there is a lot of mathematics behind "building" a profitable menu.

Menu Flexibility: Create a menu that allows for ingredient substitutions based on seasonality or ingredient availability. This ensures that you can adapt to changing circumstances without wasting items.

Food and beverage costs and preventing waste in manufacturing can be achieved through key strategies. Meticulous inventory management is essential, ensuring accurate tracking of ingredient quantities, their shelf life, and rotation. Implementing portion control measures and standardized recipes helps reduce the overuse of ingredients. Supplier negotiations and seeking discounts can also lower ingredient costs. Adequate staff training in food handling and preparation and using technology like kitchen management software (RedZone) can enhance efficiency and reduce errors. Finally, implementing waste reduction initiatives like composting or donation programs for surplus food can minimize environmental impact and optimize resource utilization.