CAUSES OF HIGH FOOD COST

The major areas where may cause a high food cost are:

Menu planning:

  1. No consideration of the time of day, day of week, holidays, weather, temperature.
  2. Menu not clean, understandable or dramatic.
  3. Too many or too few items on the menu
  4. Poor promotion of low cost items.
  5. Poor pricing of menu items.
  6. No consideration of type and amount of equipment needed to process the menu items.

Purchasing:

  1. Purchasing too much
  2. Purchasing for too high a cost
  3. No detailed set of specification governing quality, weights, types etc.
  4. No competitive purchasing policy
  5. Poor relationship with purveyors/suppliers.
  6. No cost budget for purchasing
  7. Theft by receiving man

Receiving:

  1. No check on prices, quality, or quantity
  2. No system of obtaining credit for damaged goods or goods not received
  3. No check of receiving methods or procedures
  4. Poor receiving equipment
  5. No records
  6. Perishable foods let out too long before storing

Storing:

  1. Food placed improperly in storage areas (fats, eggs and milk etc)
  2. Stored at wrong temperature
  3. No daily inspection of foods stored
  4. Theft in storeroom
  5. No periodic report of dead stock or record of inventory turnover.
  6. No physical or perpetual inventory
  7. No policy of one man’s responsibilities for food storage and issues

Issuing:

  1. No control or record of foods issued from storeroom
  2. No authority or responsibility for requisitions and issues
  3. Careless pricing of issues
  4. No forced issues.

Preparing:

  1. Poor or no mechanical equipment for boning, slicing, cutting, carving, trimming, and peeling.
  2. Excessive trim of vegetables and meats
  3. No check on raw yields
  4. No use of end products for production of low cost meals.

Processing:

  1. Over production
  2. Using wrong methods of cooking
  3. Cooking at wrong purchasing
  4. Cooking too long
  5. No use of standard recipes

Service:

  1. No standard portion size
  2. No care of left-over
  3. No record of food served or leaving the kitchen
  4. Carelessness (spillage, waste etc.)

Sales:

  1. Waitress theft
  2. Cashier theft
  3. Carelessness with walk-outs
  4. No sales records to detect trends
  5. Unattractive food, poorly served in dirty atmosphere

Controls:

  1. No forecast of sales or cost budget
  2. No records of price trends
  3. No control through the use forms
  4. No accounting for employee and officer meals
  5. No control of facts