Mastering Food Cost Control: How Simple Systems and Toast Technology Can Help
Controlling food costs is one of the most important aspects of running a successful restaurant, especially in a competitive industry. For restaurants in Granby and other Connecticut towns, maintaining profitability requires keeping food and liquor costs within industry standards—usually 28% to 35% for food and 18% to 24% for liquor.
Achieving this balance can be challenging, but simple systems can help. By focusing on inventory tracking, ordering accuracy, portion control, and monitoring supplier prices, restaurants can maintain control over food costs and reduce waste. Implementing these processes leads to more consistent expenses and maximized profits.
But beyond these traditional methods, technology like Toast can revolutionize food cost management. Toast’s advanced tools provide real-time insights into sales, waste, and menu performance, allowing restaurant owners to make informed decisions daily. This level of detail ensures that managers can adjust quickly when trends change, or when supply chain costs fluctuate.
Industry Averages and How to Maintain Them
For most restaurants, adhering to industry food cost averages of 28% to 35% means closely managing menu pricing, ingredient usage, and waste reduction. Liquor costs should stay in the 18% to 24% range, especially in bars or venues with a strong drink sales component. But many restaurants overshoot these targets simply because they don’t have the right systems in place to keep track of costs.
Menu Engineering and Pricing: One common way to keep food costs in check is through menu engineering. By analyzing the most and least profitable menu items, restaurant owners can strategically price and market their offerings. Items with high margins should be prominently featured, while low-margin dishes should be re-evaluated or adjusted in price to better align with cost goals.
Portion Control and Consistency: Another critical system involves portion control. By training staff to use precise measurements for ingredients, restaurants can reduce waste and prevent over-serving, which can drive up costs. In addition, maintaining consistency across dishes is key for both food cost management and customer satisfaction. Tools like Toast can streamline this process by providing clear, scalable recipes and POS integration.
Inventory Management: Inventory tracking is an essential part of controlling food costs, as it helps restaurants avoid over-ordering and reduce spoilage. With Toast’s built-in inventory management system, restaurants can easily track ingredient levels, set up automatic reorder triggers, and even forecast future needs based on sales trends. This automation ensures that you’re not stocking more than you need, which directly reduces food costs.
How Toast Helps Control Food Costs
Toast's POS system doesn’t just track sales—it integrates with inventory management, labor cost monitoring, and even vendor relations. When a customer orders a dish, Toast tracks the ingredients used, reducing the chance of waste and helping you stay on top of your food costs.
Toast’s real-time reporting allows restaurant owners to see exactly how each menu item performs, tracking both food and liquor costs in a detailed, actionable way. If a specific ingredient price goes up, or if waste becomes an issue, Toast’s platform makes it easy to adjust pricing, tweak portion sizes, or change the ordering process to keep margins in line with industry standards.
Toast also helps restaurants monitor their labor costs, which ties into overall operational expenses. With more efficient processes in place, such as using tablets for order entry and tracking staff performance, restaurants can keep labor and food costs under control simultaneously.
By incorporating all of these features into one comprehensive platform, Toast helps restaurants streamline operations while reducing unnecessary food costs. Whether you run a small café in Connecticut or a larger establishment, the technology ensures that you stay competitive by optimizing both your menu and your operational efficiency. You can read more about how the Toast POS can help you control costs here
Conclusion
Controlling food and liquor costs is key to success in the restaurant industry, especially in regions like Connecticut, where competition can be fierce. Implementing simple systems like menu engineering, portion control, and inventory tracking are great first steps. However, leveraging advanced tools like Toast allows restaurants to take their cost management to the next level. By providing real-time data on sales, costs, and operations, Toast makes it easier to stay within industry averages and ultimately increase profitability.
By using a system like Toast, Connecticut restaurant owners can focus more on growing their business and less on juggling spreadsheets and guessing where their food costs are creeping up. Technology is becoming an essential partner for modern restaurants, and with the right tools, you can ensure that food and liquor costs stay well under control while maximizing profit potential.
