 What can possibly be eliminated?

 What can possibly be improved?

Lower inventory levels Obviously, there's a limit to how much you can lower inventory
levels, but it's common for many restaurants to have more food on their shelves than they
really need. Evaluate your inventory levels product by product and base your reorder
levels on how much you think you'll actually use until the next delivery comes in and add in
a small but reasonable safety factor. By reducing excess inventory you'll have less waste
and spoilage and you'll likely see your staff do a better job of portioning and handling your
expensive products when there is less of it on hand.

Cost Control
The main reason of maintaining a low food inventory is to control cost. Any food business
related company increase their profit by saving money by keeping low inventory on regular
basis. Purchasing lesser amount of food on regular basis is better than big quantity purchases
on non-regular basis.

Waste Prevention Low food inventory leads to less amount of wasted product. It also reduces
the cost of mechanical breakdowns for example: if storage refrigerator is out of order, with low
inventory the amount of food to be loss is minimized.

Labor Time Stowing and moving food is a labor-intensive process. If inventory is high this
process need to follow. Quantity of labor is high for high food inventory because food needs to
be moved around more frequently, for different reasons. If inventory is lower than labor would
be more efficient and less labor would be required.

Storage Low food inventory leads to lesser storage spaces resulting in area reduction of food
forages and that space can be used for other processes. Reassignment of space in this manner
can aid in increasing overall efficiency.
In order to reduce inventory, companies must develop an inventory strategy first. Without a
strategy in place, your company could see themselves with a surplus or shortage of inventory.
Daily inventory on key items. This is one of the most basic, yet effective cost controls in
the restaurant business and we're constantly amazed at how many independent operators
don't do it. This practice begins with identifying your top 10-15 products that make up the
bulk of your food cost. Each day, count and record the beginning or opening quantity on
hand for each product. Add to that any purchases during the day. At the end of the closing
shift, count the ending inventory and compute the usage for each item by adding the
beginning quantity and the purchases, then subtract the ending amount on hand. The
result is the amount of each product that was used. Now, compare that figure with the
POS (point-of-sale) product usage report for each product. If actual usage is greater that
the POS (theoretical) usage, investigate immediately. Could be a sign of theft, over
portioning or other food-use problem.
Consolidate purchases with a prime vendor arrangement. We've noticed that the
practice of buying a large portion of products from one broad line supplier is much more
common in more highly profitable restaurants than it is in marginally successful ones.
While one-stop shopping, as it's sometimes referred to, is no panacea, in most cases
consolidating the majority of purchases with one supplier tends to offer the opportunity to
lower overall food prices and costs. Prime vendor relationships can be structured in many
ways but most operate on a cost-plus basis.
Audit first and last 15-30 minutes of every shift. There's a saying that "Work expands
so as to fill the time available for its completion." This means that when employees are
given less time for a task they will work faster and get more work done than they are
presently doing. In restaurants, you can often tell if employees have too much time by
noticing their pace and sense of urgency during the first and last 15-30 minutes of each
shift. A casual or slow pace especially during these times may indicate that they could get
the same amount of work done on their shift with fewer hours on your clock.
Outsourcing Out sourcing is one option you can consider if you want to reduce supply chain
costs. Of course, you’ll need to conduct proper due diligence to ascertain whether or not service
providers under consideration have the ability to provide enough of a productivity and efficiency
benefit to justify your out-of-pocket expenses for such services. Under the right set of
circumstances, an outsourcing arrangement can lead to substantial savings and a property
functioning supply chain.
Stop doing a repetitive schedule. Prepare the weekly labor schedule based on
anticipated sales and customer counts. As business slows or ramps up, adjust employee
hours accordingly.
Establish and use detailed specifications for every product you buy.  Detailed specs
are needed to ensure consistency of your products and to accurately compare bids. You
may also discover that a lower grade on some products will still give you results you want.
Buy only what you need. Over purchasing is one of the most expensive things you can
do in this business. It leads to more waste, spoilage and over portioning.
Use purchase orders. Keep a record of what you ordered, the quantity ordered and the
quoted price. At check-in, verify that this matches what is physically at the back door and
on the vendor's invoice. Mistakes happen and they are usually not in your favor.
Focus on selling your highest gross profit menu items regardless of food
cost. There are times when a higher food cost can mean more profit. Such is the case
when you promote and sell more high-cost dishes like steak or fresh seafood and sell
fewer lower-cost items such as spaghetti or grilled chicken. While the steak may have a
high food cost it will usually bring in more gross profit dollars, resulting in higher food cost
but a larger profit too.
Calculate and report on your cost of sales and labor cost every week.  It's a fact: What
gets measured improves your bottom line and your biggest and most volatile costs are
food, beverage and labor costs. These costs added together are referred to as a
restaurant's prime cost and the most profitable restaurants in the industry know their prime
cost at the end of every week. When there is a problem, they can react quickly and get it
resolved instead of not knowing a problem exists when this information is only calculated
once a month.
Cost out every menu item and recipe. To be profitable, a restaurant not only needs to
achieve specific sales goals but it must also hit certain cost targets as well. However, if
you don't know what your target should be then how can you expect to hit it? The first step
to projecting a cost target is to create a master inventory list and pricing of every
ingredient you purchase. Using the master inventory, you can calculate the cost of every
recipe and menu item for comparison with the selling price of the menu item.
Turn off unneeded burners, fryers or ovens during off-peak time. An often overlooked
opportunity for cost savings is utility costs. Unneeded gas or electric burners, exhaust
hoods, steamers and ovens can use thousands of dollars in wasted energy each year. Add
to that the additional electricity or gas for heating and cooling unused dining rooms. Utility
costs typically range anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 percent of overall sales. Incorporating the
temperature setting and use of equipment into opening, shift change and closing
procedures can produce significant cost savings.
Waste Reduction Value Chain:

Purchasing: have real-time control over your stock and the sold items
Storage: maintain an overview of stock using an improved date sticker system
Mise en Place: produce items once you are sure they will be utilized and hence not over
producing
Preparation to Order: will use your products intelligently and incorporate ‘waste’ products
Portioning & Plate Waste: the right portions will prevent your kitchen producing excessive plate
waste
Disposal: learn from your plate waste and dispose of your organic waste sustainably.

Waste Audit:

Step 1 – Use our waste audit to measure your

Menu assessment :
Every menu has its own distribution of demand. When you look at your dessert menu for
instance, you can probably rank the items based on demand effortlessly. It goes without saying
that this distribution should also be taken into account in your forecasting, purchasing, stock
and Mise en Place. Outside your menu, you often sell specials – seasonal favorites, or dishes
you have created with yesterday’s leftovers. By assessing the nature of these specials, you can
adjust the basic distribution of your menu accordingly as the specials have an impact on your
sales