BUSINESS STUDIES:
Challenges:
- New restaurants opens to overwhelming success and doesn’t have appropriate systems in place to manage operational cost variance at the higher than expected level of volume. Restaurant management has all they can do to manage the day to day operations.
- How to engineer the menu to lower structural food cost while providing premium quality menu items.
Solutions:
- Implemented operational purchasing process to control Cost of Sales using product mix data to drive inventory and prep levels leading to consistently lower food and labor costs.
- Systematically re-engineered menu to lower food cost by 7%, improve kitchen throughput and drive customers to higher margin products.
Results:
- $200,000 annually brought directly to the bottom line.
- Increased quality and consistency of menu items resulting in higher customer satisfaction and frequency.
BUSINESS STUDIES:
Challenges: Successful restaurant company with 2 units is poised for rapid growth
- Purchasing procedures and agreements need to be evaluated to leverage current and anticipated volume.
- Decrease required head count per unit to ease expansion.
- Increase consistency of menu items.
- Minimize fluctuation in food cost due to price variations in raw product.
Solutions:
- Developed strategic plan to prioritize purchasing and operational initiatives based on potential gross profit return and operational needs allowing ownership to attack individual areas as their time and resources permitted.
- Introduced select high quality value added products reducing unit level labor requirements while increasing product consistency and allowing for stable contracted pricing
Results:
- Negotiated new master distribution agreement lowering net margin paid on product by 30%.
- Decreased unit head count by 10%.
- Improved consistency of menu items leading to increased customer frequency.