fish weighed rather than by the fish price. If you are going for the fish price, really trust your supplier. If they are time hungry, there is no incentive for them to do a good job in cutting the fish up for you after they have weighed it.
One of the reasons I call this thinking wet weight v dry weight is because sometimes you will sell something at plate weight that has lost a lot of moisture. If you dry age your own beef you can lose as much as 20% of the weight. Salami 10-15% weight loss. This loss is on top of what you have taken off when trimming, so it soon adds up.
The other reason is that sometimes a lot of your costs is literally wet. Frozen seafood sold by the pound will include the water glaze, as much as 50% in ice. Buy things in cans? You pay for the oil, brine or water in those too.
Cash v percentage margins
When you start looking at gross margin, we are talking about the same thing as when we looked at gross profit. While one of these numbers is a percentage and the other the overall cash benefit, they rely on each other. Basically, percentage margin is the part of the menu price that represents your direct profit. If you have a target gross profit of 100k at a 50% margin you will need to be looking at a turnover in excess of 200k. You have to get to that target by taking a number of different sized steps.
There are items on your menu that will achieve high contributions of percentage towards the target and some which will offer high cash amounts into the pot. Something like coffee, many homemade desserts and soups will offer high percentage and low cash. On the other hand some of your wine list and expensive steaks could offer up low percentage and high cash.
A table of four may look like this:
| Dish | Price | Cost | Cash | % |
| 4 soups | 20.00 | 4.00 | 16.00 | 80 |
| 2 steaks | 30.00 | 15.00 | 15.00 | 50 |
| 1 chicken | 12.00 | 4.00 | 8.00 | 66 |
| 1 vegetarian | 10.00 | 3.00 | 7.00 | 70 |
| 4 Desserts | 24.00 | 6.00 | 16.00 | 75 |
| 2 wine | 40.00 | 20.00 | 20.00 | 50 |
| 4 coffees | 8.00 | 1.00 | 7.00 | 87 |
| TOTAL | 144.00 | 53.00 | 91.00 | 63 |
Your 5.00 portion of soup probably costs no more than 1.00 for ingredients? So you have 80% margin on that dish. The same patron orders a 20.00 bottle of wine, please don’t tell me that has only cost you 4.00? Hopefully there is something more in the region of 8-10.00 for wine, which gives you a margin of 50-60%.
Doesn’t seem that bad until you see that close to 40% of your gross margin on that table came from the steak and wine alone. Then if you think you have taken 18 items out to table, the mains and the wine gave you 55% of your profit, the other 12 “high percentage” items contributed the remaining 45%.
Count all the waste
We have already talked about weight v dry weight and making sure you know what you are not getting on the table. This takes it a further step and may start to give you some ideas about economies. If you send out a fatty piece of lamb does it matter? You sell this to a customer and some comes back. This is now food waste but is also reputation waste. What you are trying to put on a plate is accurately costed, so this is one angle of waste. However, measuring your levels of waste tell you more than what comes back on a plate.
1 How careful is the prep?
If you have one chef prepping side veg and he generates more waste than another, then you need to ask why. Does the person have lower knife skills, are they lazy or cannot gauge the quantity they need. You can replace a lazy chef with a machine that can do a consistent job if the level of waste justifies it.
2 Have you defined waste?
Well have you? The answer is all about looking at the chain between storage and the bin. Nothing should go in the bin unless it cannot be reused or is unfit. In traditional kitchen they would employ a garde manger who’s sole purpose was to save as much waste leaving the kitchen. Meat and fat offcuts can be made into sausages, rillettes or pates. Veg scraps and herb stalks can be used in stocks, cheese in sauces etc.
3 Bin costs
When food hits the bins there are several numbers to work in. How much did the food cost, especially if this is produce which has gone out of date? How much does the bin cost to get lifted and replaced? How much time can you keep a bin on site before it becomes a nuisance? Can you recycle or compost your waste onsite?
As a rule, most of this cost cannot be traced to a menu item, but will affect the overall gross margin of the kitchen. General food waste is more insipid and can be big numbers if left uncontrolled.
Add on costs
Yes, more costs which get attached to your food bills. The obvious item is shipping and packaging. If you cannot get some ingredients locally, be expected to pay for someone to send that. This is a cost that needs to be included as part of your food costs as it focusing your attention on how much it really costs. True kitchen cost needs to reflect the overall cost of buying in the produce.
You may also need to be aware of hidden costs, just as your customers will look for those cover charges on your menu. Suppliers are often squeezed on their margins and will try and be resourceful in the ways they can maximise revenues. If you don’t ask the questions first, you could get stung with these surcharges, but often won’t notice till you get the first invoice. Here are a few examples:
Fuel charges
Environmental impact
Disposal of packaging
Filleting
Higher fees for items below package or case size
Congestion or toll fees
The list goes on, but these are all reasonably fair excuses to ask for credit
