By Philip Fakhri, F&B Professional- With over 25 years in the Food and Beverage industry I have worked in hotels, restaurants and senior residences. Throughout my career I have developed a keen understanding of controlling operating costs with a focus on lowering food costs.
In 2013 I was hired by a multinational company operating several senior residences in the United States, Canada and Europe. My mandate was to identify food cost waste in the management of their kitchens for their Canadian residence. When I arrived the average daily budget per resident was $13 per day. This included three snacks and three meals per day. They had a goal of getting their budget per day down to $7 per resident per day without affecting quality.
I set out by spending two weeks in the kitchen observing their practices in order to identify where the issues were and why they were running over budget. In two weeks it was clear there were many issues contributing to their budget overages. There really weren’t too many surprises but it was perplexing how so many issues were allowed to continue for so long including:
- No control over purchasing
- Higher then normal occurrence of theft by staff
- A lot of waste
- Lack of portion size control
I reviewed my findings with upper management and then proceeded to make my fixes in priority order. The first thing on my list was to address inventory management and purchasing. I looked at what was in stock and then met with suppliers and renegotiated pricing and delivery of the same quality foods at better prices. I changed the day and time of delivery to better meet the needs and flow of how the kitchen prepped and used foods. This in turn would allow for less waste.
By Once this was handled I reviewed the menus as well as the portion size for each meal. I ordered the use of smaller dishes and spoon service but instructed servers to give residence the amount they wanted in order to cut down on waste. Finally I addressed loss prevention to cut down on theft. I introduced strict control over access to food for staff as well as a special registration that must be used allowing food served only with permission from the Chef.
In just two months I managed to not only meet their goal, but reach an even lower cost per day of just $6.30 per resident per day. This was a savings of .70 per plate based on their budget, but almost slashed their cost per plate by 5 percent. I balanced the budget without affecting the quality of the food resulting in happier residents as well as less waste.
