With the economic situation at the forefront of everyone`s minds, Restaurant magazine has created the Thrifty 50 - top advice from industry experts on how to get your business through the downturn.
Today we conclude our list with tips on how you can save money on your Menu.
- Don’t give your food away. The danger of heavy promotion is that you can sink below the break-even point regardless of the extra covers that this policy might gain. Give too much away in the pricing and there will be insufficient funds to survive. Also, if you give your food away, what does it say about the food?
- Engineer your menu. For lunchtimes in particular, offer fewer dishes so fresh ingredients aren’t wasted. Look at putting cheaper cuts of meat on your menu – a slow cooked lamb
- shank can be fabulous – or use cheaper, more unusual fish than the more expensive varieties.
- Grow your own herbs. To buy a bunch can cost an average of £2, pricey if you get through two or three bunches a day. It’s easy to grow rosemary, thyme, chives and more – either from seed or from plants – and it will save you lots of money over the course of the year.
- Use the oven more efficiently by cooking two dishes at the same time, e.g. tomorrow’s braised dish could be in the back of the oven whilst today’s food is being cooked.
- Ensure that the wine list has plenty of choice of cheaper bins and that there is a separate ‘by the glass’ or half bottle list. The sale of a glass of wine is better than no sale – you’ll get bigger profits from wines by the glass – and without this option customers may just forego the cost of a whole bottle when budgets are tight.
- Go prix fixe. A barrier for some people eating out is that they don’t know how much it will cost them. Fixed priced menus, for lunch and dinner, can remove this uncertainty and bring otherwise reluctant customers in.
- Buy whole animals. This is only a good idea if you have the chiller space and your staff have the requisite butchery skills, but a whole carcass of meat is significantly cheaper than buying it ready prepared.
- Start a delivery service. If the lunchtime rush won’t come to you then go to them. In tough times workers don’t want to be seen leaving their desks for long lunches, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t prepared to pay for a decent feed at their desk.
- Ask every chef from each section to compile a list of fresh ingredients available for next day’s plat du jour.
View the Thrifty 50 list in full
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.