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Teleconference Recap: Catering for Franchisors
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 25 2009
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Taking Small and scaling it Big
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 16 2009
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Catering is Happening
(1) Comments • Permalink • 09 02 2009
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The uptrend in home dining can WORK for restaurants
(0) Comments • Permalink • 08 05 2009
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Small and mobile
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 25 2009
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Why run a commissary?
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 23 2009
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4 Operational Tips to Boost Sales, Improve Efficiency
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 01 2009
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Leading with sustainability
(1) Comments • Permalink • 06 17 2009
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Success built on social media
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 07 2009
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Social media hardware for bakeries
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 01 2009
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Look who’s catering!
(1) Comments • Permalink • 05 27 2009
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Twenty-one food cost tweets
(0) Comments • Permalink • 05 14 2009
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This is a food industry story
(0) Comments • Permalink • 05 03 2009
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Going to Chicago
(0) Comments • Permalink • 05 03 2009
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Nice things from Boudin
(0) Comments • Permalink • 05 02 2009
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Why Catering is Crucial
(0) Comments • Permalink • 03 31 2009
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Scaling your catering effort
(0) Comments • Permalink • 03 22 2009
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Finding your way: adjusting budgets
(1) Comments • Permalink • 03 05 2009
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Subscribe to real bread
(0) Comments • Permalink • 03 03 2009
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Forecasting errors = spoilage
(0) Comments • Permalink • 02 16 2009
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Catering at the Executive Level
(0) Comments • Permalink • 02 08 2009
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Finding growth in a recession: ENRG
(0) Comments • Permalink • 02 04 2009
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Riding to fight homelessness
(0) Comments • Permalink • 02 01 2009
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Diversifying with specialty foods
(0) Comments • Permalink • 01 28 2009
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When Catering and Restaurant compete for resources
(1) Comments • Permalink • 12 10 2008
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Higher end restaurants, now on call
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 29 2008
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Catering & Delivery: a different business, a different promotion strategy
3. Print media
Local papers have the advantage of being targeted to the areas you want to reach, but they don’t always speak to the clients you want. Even when advertising rates in mass print media are relatively low, better value may be found in targeted business publications.
You can also bypass print ad spending altogether by getting your name out there in a service review section or by participating in a newsworthy event. These take some creative thinking. Sometimes, engaging a PR professional can come at a fraction of the cost of ad spending; compared to advertisements, news and lifestyle stories usually carry a lot more weight among readers.
4. Promotions to existing customers
Keeping an existing customer can be much easier than gaining a new one. Promotions to existing customers helps keep regular revenue alive, and can help uncover unmet demand.
Imagine having a group of customers that order your breakfast or lunch service five days a week. Einstein’s has that. By providing on time delivery of a good, consistent product. Vance Carlton, Sales Director for the national Catering & Delivery program for Einstein Noah’s Restaurant Group, will tell you that there is quite simply no customer retention without great execution of delivery. Meetings require food delivered right and on time. Period. Vance’s inspiring account of expanding Catering sales, even during a recession – recorded at MonkeyMedia in early November 2008 can be heard here.
Retention starts with giving a good product and service experience. Arguably, the best leave behind is the active memory of a good experience with your service offering. There is a physical leave behind to consider too. Restaurants go to great pains to establish the right décor, service style, menu and signage, forming a cohesive brand imprint. In catering, the only persistent brand physical brand imprint, besides the food and beverages delivered, is the box that the food came in – which is often left on the boardroom table. The box carries your message, as well as handy contact information. Make the box count. Related MMnet article: How a Catering Box Changed Everything.
It’s good business to let your customers know that they matter to you. Study your customers’ order frequency, trends, favorites, and their seasonal ordering. Design promotions based on what they customers buy, and what you think they might buy, and introduce loyalty programs and seasonal discounts to strengthen your reach.
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 21 2008
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Determine the cost of each item
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 20 2008
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Moving ahead: earning liquidity
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 20 2008
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Help: the market is shifting
5. Control use of ingredients with proper scaling
Controlling scaling weights, both with the original batch mixing and unit weight in processing, must be a high priority for any baker or restaurant with a food factory.
While scaling for initial batch mixing, the cost of reckless scaling adds up, both on occasionally-used and expensive ingredients, or compounded on commonly used ingredients such as flour and water.
When dividing a bread dough or batter into individual units, in the past it may have been easier to stay above minimum finished weights for labeling unit weight claims by scaling unnecessarily heavy, as compared to processing more accurately. Reviewing scaling accuracies can yield tens of thousands of units a month that can be sold, or smaller batch sizes for the same current production volumes.
6. Review ingredient specification agreements
Firm up agreements with ingredient suppliers, and have them deliver to standards that will be accepted at delivery. Making the ingredient suppliers aware of your specific needs, what is within acceptable variance, what will be rejected vastly minimizes quality, cost and consistency problems which if unchecked can result in huge capital drains.
Having specification declarations with each new batch of incoming ingredients, and nutritional declaration sheets if any significant changes occur to the nutritional profile, has become a must for a number of reasons.
If there is a change in the ingredient nutritional profile, density or quality attribute, and you are not notified of a change, you can minimize legal exposure for some recalls if the ingredient supplier has been put on notice of your requirements and that they’re required to notify concerning any changes. This can not only protect your brand name, nutritional declarations updated when there are changes, along with specification sheets that accompany each shipment, will also minimize daily variances in production that lead to quality, yield and waste increases.
Click here for a more on managing ingredient specification agreements.
7. Review how you manage inventory
Overordering is a problem during downturns, as operators sometimes are guilty of over-optimism. This will impact cash flow, and can result in spoilage.
Some food factories also spend a tremendous amount of money purchasing ingredients above usual cost. They have to make emergency purchases from nontraditional suppliers, or even send employees in delivery vehicles to pick things up when their inventories are insufficient or poorly managed. Ingredients are lost as wasted when too much is on hand; the cost of storage space, especially if cold stored, can be similarly abused. Minimizing the suppliers used and the varieties of similar ingredients can greatly simplify handling ingredients. It can also reduce confusion over ordering, and make tracking easier. Do you need help managing your inventory?
(0) Comments • Permalink • 11 19 2008
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Driving new sales with value added comfort foods
(0) Comments • Permalink • 10 30 2008
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Get a grip on popular and unpopular items
(0) Comments • Permalink • 10 23 2008
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Reporting on inventory variances
(0) Comments • Permalink • 10 20 2008
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The #1 cause of high food cost
(0) Comments • Permalink • 10 20 2008
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Changing the shape of America
(0) Comments • Permalink • 10 14 2008
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Mandatory calorie counts splash down in California
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 30 2008
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Sounds good, looks good
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 28 2008
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2008 Harvest Review
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 23 2008
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Keeping an eye on commodity prices
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 23 2008
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Food Cost Control for Restaurants
Step Five: Manage the profit margin for menu items that utilize key items as ingredients. This process is relatively easy, but requires some initial time investment, as well as a bit of ongoing effort. To analyze the profit margin and menu item food cost, recipe cards should be created for each menu item. Based upon the results of the recipe cards, operators should determine if the profit margin and food cost are acceptable according to an operation’s standards. If menu items that utilize your key items have a disadvantageous pricing structure, an operation will always struggle with achieving a desired food cost. It is highly recommended that an operator execute menu engineering for menu items that utilize key items, although simply using and updating recipe cards to keep tabs on shifting profit margins will also have a positive effect. Operators should be certain that recipe cards utilize the edible portion cost of particular items, rather than the “as purchased” cost. Not to beat a dead cow, but operators that serve Prime Rib need to be very careful and vigilant during this step.
Step Six: Complete an ideal usage for your key items. By comparing actual key item usage against ideal usage, operators can identify operational issues effecting key items. Operators can easily determine ideal key item usage by multiplying menu item sales counts located on a product mix report by the standardized key item portion for that specific menu item. This process should be repeated for all menu items that utilize the key item and the sum of these represents the ideal usage for the key item. Comparing this ideal usage with the actual usage that can be determined utilizing purchasing data and inventory extensions will reveal the usage variance for key items. Ideally, the usage variance should be zero. While this is often an impossible goal for all but value-added, convenience items, operators should examine all key item variances that are above established tolerance levels and create a strategy to reduce the variance.
Step Seven: Attack the usage variances! Once the ideal usage comparison previously described has been completed, an operator should begin attacking the identified variances above the tolerance threshold. I have included a few of the common problem areas when trying to attack key item usage variances. First, check current yields against the established acceptable standards. These variances can be due to improper training and production procedures, as well as a change in the key item specifications. For example, flank steak that is cooked off and pre-portioned will have a decreasing yield as the fat content in the flank steak is increased due to improper purchasing or distributor error. Second, operators should increase the awareness of key item variances within the operation. It is not enough to see the variance on paper, but rather habits in the field need to be tweaked and adjusted if this variance is to be corrected. Raising awareness should include staff training on what the proper recipe specs are and how to execute portion control. Raising awareness and communicating concerns often goes a long way to help reduce variances. Third, make sure that there are portion control systems in place to control portioning and that all necessary supplies are in place. It does no good to tell a cook to put 1/2 cup of cheese on a pizza if he does not have a 1/2 cup, or if he refuses to use it. Fourth, execute sensitive inventories.
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 19 2008
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Ask a food industry expert…
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 11 2008
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Recipe Costing - Beyond Basic
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 10 2008
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High commodity prices: What’s a baker to do?
(1) Comments • Permalink • 09 08 2008
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Tasting with our eyes
(0) Comments • Permalink • 09 03 2008
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Basic Recipe Costing
(3) Comments • Permalink • 09 02 2008
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When customers have allergies
(0) Comments • Permalink • 08 28 2008
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Technology for the enterprise
(1) Comments • Permalink • 08 19 2008
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Food fight
(0) Comments • Permalink • 08 05 2008
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Managing supply agreements
(0) Comments • Permalink • 08 04 2008
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QA and QC in the bakery
(1) Comments • Permalink • 08 04 2008
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Scrutinizing bakery formulas
(0) Comments • Permalink • 08 04 2008
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Don’t ignore them
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 31 2008
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Visiting the Food Bank
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 30 2008
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Store Wars
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 22 2008
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Open Invitation
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 21 2008
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Privacy Policy
Permalink • 07 17 2008
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Extending shelf life on product lines
(4) Comments • Permalink • 07 13 2008
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Fresh food
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 09 2008
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Food safety
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 09 2008
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Better to accept criticism
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 04 2008
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Sourcing local foods
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 04 2008
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Food pairing
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 02 2008
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The square of an egg
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 02 2008
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A taste of things to come?
(0) Comments • Permalink • 07 02 2008
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Zingerman’s Irish
(1) Comments • Permalink • 06 12 2008
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Fueled by passion: what microbreweries teach us
Micro businesses can be extremely vulnerable to market fluctuations and competition within their market segment. They simply have to succeed in their limited market, and all the pieces, from production to sales, are critical to their success. However, when the entire business is absorbed in the conversion of a common, specific, worthwhile goal, things are likely to work out.
Over time, we can expect the majors to successfully counter by making ever more flavorful beers and use their distribution muscle to push them. In food, we see the same phenomenon: the gulf between a specialty cheese from a local cheese factory, for instance, and a gourmet line made by one of the majors, is narrowing. When two products from very different business models may be indistinguishable in quality and variety, how is a consumer to choose? Price is an obvious answer. Unless shipping costs become extremely prohibitive, the economy of scale of the large manufacturers puts them at an immediate advantage; as gas prices continue to increase, this advantage wanes.
Niche food companies have a distinct advantage of their own. By virtue of their size, localized history, and ground level culture, they have a better chance to stimulate and foster a genuine love of what they do, both among employees and customers. This can translate to healthier customer responsiveness, and a response of stronger customer loyalty. The loyalty comes from authentic relationship, rather than pure branding or advertising image. In addition, they naturally fulfill the growing demand for locally owned an operated, an naturally products. Tough to beat.
Niche food companies, in other words, are more apt to succeed through marketing enthusiasm. Marketing enthusiasm, a term probably coined by British marketing consultant and blogger John Grant, stands in contradistinction to marketing aspiration (image). “It is about being involved in things you have a passion for versus passively buying something which might make you look good. “
On a sunny Friday afternoon, I’m standing by the loading dock with Rick Dellow, gulping down a glass of oatmeal stout, as the light and reassuring waft of stale beer filled his 3,000 square foot facility. Just a few feet away,
Spencer Parton is experimenting with a 20 gallon batch of alcoholic ginger ale for a local restaurant, The Hamilton Street Grill. I’m struck by how the staff, and Rick himself, are obviously happy to be here; I wonder out loud how Rick selected his team members. Rick Dellow: “You have to want to be involved in this; you have to love your job and you have to love beer.” Love takes sacrifice: “We can’t pay people what they deserve. Compared to larger breweries, we are selling in micro quantities. But what we offer our employees is a chance to be themselves, express their creativity and get a chance to experiment within their organization…We [also] offer them a chance to fail.”
So, does a micro business culture scale? It can. This year R & B is nearly doubling its floor space to 5,000 square feet. They are now up to 3,100 hectoliters of beer annually, though they could quadruple their capacity and still stay within the bounds of a textbook definition of a microbrewery. Small potatoes? Yes and no. R & B Brewing is a company that is prospering in this economy, and the people who work there are obviously in high spirits.
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 12 2008
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Fun in the food court? Yes, it is possible
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 06 2008
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Learning from spaghetti sauce
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 06 2008
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Cracks in the fast food nation
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 06 2008
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Food costs: World and US trends as predictors of what is to come
Finally, the other major factor in these food costs is shipping or overseas freight costs. Not only is the cost of fuel sky high but availability of cargo ships has been stretched thin. However, in response to China’s shortages and use of ships, in addition to the steep increases of cargo ships used for coal, iron ore, steel, cement and fertilizers in general, the shipping industry is responding to incentives to build more cargo ships.
It takes 2-3 years to get a ship on the sea. However looking at orders and under construction vessels, the number of new container ships added to the market place is expected to be greater in the coming year than the total of the last 3-4 years combined. Additionally, the types of ships under construction are the Panamax (60,000 ton) and Cape (80,000 ton) capacity vessels to replace the aging Handy (25,000 ton) and Handymax (40,000 ton) capacity ships. This will not yield a price impact on commodities this year but is expected to buffer or soften overseas freight charges after 1-2 years.
In summary, the prediction is that we should see a softening of prices of soft wheat and at least a holding of prices on hard wheat. We may never see the days of prices reflecting 300 US dollars (USD) a ton as we had in the early 2000s. However, the prices should moderate down from the 600-800 USD a ton levels to maybe 500 USD a ton levels. We are already seeing prices go down based on the predictions of the world harvests being strong. US free on board (FOB) prices at the dock have dropped nearly 100 USD per ton from 450 to 350 on average already. Many of the factors that have affected wheat have similar ramifications for the other major food grains our food streams are based upon. We will be getting real numbers in the weeks to come as the harvests begin in earnest.
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 05 2008
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Trends in packaging design
(0) Comments • Permalink • 06 05 2008
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Related Entries
Catering & Delivery: a different business, a different promotion strategy
Catering & Delivery may have grown out your restaurant or restaurant chain.
But it is a completely differentiated business; you need to promote it as one.
Catering at the Executive Level
Catering needs executives who
1) ‘get it’, and
2) have time to focus on Catering.
Update from February 2009 Brown Bag seminar on casual catering at the Executive level.
A report from QSR magazine.
An answer to ‘why cater?’ - beyond a loyal customer base, an established brand, and an outfitted kitchen.
Diversifying with specialty foods
Video: Erle Dardick, CEO of MonkeyMedia Software visits the Fancy Foods Fair in San Francisco, on Inauguration Day - January 20 2009.
Featuring restaurants that diversify with a food factory operation.
Finding growth in a recession: ENRG
Podcast interview with Vance Carlton, Einstein Noah Restaurant Group’s Director of Catering, about the success of their national program for business to business catering.