Something more concrete
For a guy that talked so much about concrete value in my other blog post, I haven’t had too much in the way of results from clients published here. For one I want to make sure that all the info is totally sanitized, & that clients are okay with my discussing their cases etc., which many of them are not, but hey. That’s life… The non-industry blog post that I typed out last night and finally published this morning brought to mind something near and dear to me, my first F&B program. A video that I recommended talking about games, and AAA game publishing structures or “work flows” had an incredible line in it.
“When you remove all limitations, you remove all incentive to innovate, find clever solutions, streamline. Many hands do not make light work…” -AAA Development vs a Bag of Chips, 6:50-7:02
The very first food program I had total control over as an F&B manager was built off of a hot plate, 3x1ft of “kitchen counter space”, a retail inventory to reduce waste from, and a team that wasn’t exactly motivated to expand services. Not to mention this was during COVID.
From this humble workstation I built a food program that on its own generated ~15% increased revenue. This was total, and did not include a complicated analysis of extra bar spend or client retention and expansion from offering a new service and substantial bites. Retail inventory was streamlined, and promoted. Offering the items from the fridge in a rotating fashion promoted retail item sales and helped deal with order minimums, freshness and turnover.
Items had severe constraints. Everything was heated or plated in short order with no more than 1 bartender and sometimes a bar back for a floor of ~75 people. Plates needed to have assembly times of 90 seconds on average for solo operations during slower days. Cook times had to be kept at 5mins or less. There were no fume hoods, no other equipment allowed besides a flat hot griddle. Space was tight, requiring the stations to be self contained and partially obscured from view.
At the start we had 3 items, and the potential product mix would never really surpass 5 items during my tenure. Each item had to fulfill a niche guest desire with little overlap on other item territories. Now to show you the numbers themselves might be funny. These little victuals would sell around 600 items a month with concentration on Fri-Sun. The average plate price was kept to ~$10 so it was an augment to the bar sales, not a detractor. Math being math, you can see the total amount/month wasn’t staggering but the percent increase certainly made for a much better bottom line. This was in liquid cash and the owner didn’t much care to put a specific number to increased drink spend. He knew it was higher with the food program and that’s all we needed.
The staff was able to absorb the prep costs during their normal working hours. The prep schedule and process had been meticulously designed to be side work for everyone except for me, who already had dedicated labor dollars and hours to inventories and other duties. The food costs were kept at 30% with a combination of bulk and modular packaging from our suppliers to make sure no food ever exceeded its shelf life. Portion control and plating were hand in hand as easy to count units and plainly visible to worker, boss and customer alike.
None of this would have been possible in a kitchen that had more options. Fryers, fume hoods, a full gas range would have drastically changed the program from what it was. This was money that had been left on the table for 2 years of bar operations before exploring it.
$60k a year from a hot plate and 15 square feet of space, during peak business hours of 156 days a year. This is not to say that it was easy. Minimizing waste, preserving freshness, and creating plates that appealed to customers took a lot of work, a little iteration and clever utilization of price points and packaging of food from our vendors. The collaboration from the team was a constant push-pull of innovation, fighting, genuine and petty feedback.
Restaurants are always fighting to maximize dollars in with the space they have. Building a new food program & adding services is an obvious and logical step for those that only have 1 or 2 revenue centers. The truth is however, that there are always ways to create these small funnels of high liquidity or high return in businesses. SMB are often dealing with their 1-2 revenue centers with no intention of handling the diligence on things like catering packages, private parties, classes that make use of their specialties etc. Especially when some of these options require additional and extensive marketing.
The opportunity cost is also massive. Say you want to do catering but can’t risk the kitchen output with volatile spikes of delivery apps; say you also can’t afford to turn off those apps because even though they cost a lot, they also give you a lot of cash. Or maybe you can’t afford OT on core staff in the kitchen to fulfill orders in off hours. Viscous cycle. No one can tell you what to do without working directly with you, because prescriptive solutions to this could cost you financial stability. Money, space and circumstance are all things you and consultants need to address in rolling out operations plans.
I often repeated to my employer at this time, “Today is the easiest day you’re going to have in this business.” He was savvy and in business for a long time before me, but he was a mom & pop. He was pivoting the space into unfamiliar territory. I had just come from a corporate restaurant background.
Each day continues to get more complicated and risky for owners just as it always has. Changing types of fraud, changing requirements of technology, speed of service, cost of service, on & on. Today is the easiest day for all of it, and if you aren’t fighting complexity, you’ll soon get overrun by it.
To end on a less depressing note, it is possible. You and your team members can find solutions and put in the work to garner success for your business. People are doing it everyday. You should be striving to do it everyday. It will not be easy. There are no shortcuts or easy tricks. Your brain and connection to customers and the market are what will give you innovation and expansion.