To help restaurants survive the recession, Restaurant magazine has compiled the Thrifty 50 - money-saving tips from industry experts.
After giving you money-saving tips on the areas of Staff and Finance, we return today with another six tips, this time on the subject of Business.
- Step up your marketing. Companies go eerily quiet in a downturn as marketing budgets are slashed, but you should market more heavily not less heavily in a downturn. That doesn’t mean blowing your entire marketing budget in the first two months of the year but if you pick your fights you can get yourself known much easier in a recession than a boom.
- Invest in stock control equipment, which will automatically calculate the gross margins on every dish. This way you can tell if you are overpaying suppliers, overdoing portion sizes or staff are stealing from you.
- Think outside the box. Roast, for example, runs very successful Christmas parties in
- January but the same principle applies for other occasions. On Valentine’s Day, for example, as well as giving the lovebirds something to celebrate it could pay to run a separate night for singles.
- Join a purchasing consortium. Buying with others can improve discounts.
- If you have a bar/reception area and provide magazines and newspapers, buy these on subscription rather than on a need basis. It is much cheaper and many publishers are doing offers which mean savings of up to 70 per cent.
- Instead of buying fresh flowers each week, buy beautiful plants – they will last forever if you take care of them and your relationship with your accountant will blossom.
For more tips on Business visit the site on Monday.
Contributors: Sara Stewart, partner at Jeffreys Henry, Chris Galvin, Ashley de Safrin, client services manager for tourism and hospitality at Business Link in London, Ken Hogg of Davis Coffer Lyons, Peter Backman, managing director at Horizons, Richard Corrigan, Daren Bale, head chef, The Elms Hotel, Worcestershire, Rob Lucy, restaurant negotiator at Christie & Co, Mitch Tonks, David Gibson, chief executive Gibson Business Infrastructures, Martin Austin, director at Tenon Recovery, Iqbal Wahhab, Roast founder, Ben Hood, managing director Fourth Hospitality.