Foodservice Updates

Foodservice Updates is designed to help foodservice operators keep on top of all the industry news and provides tips for keeping business running smooth. We endeavor to provide the latest tips and solutions to keep you in the know.

It’s time to get to know your guests

Restaurant sales are up 8 percent over where they were in June 2019, according to NPD Group’s David Portalatin. While that’s positive news for sure, business conditions are far different from what they were in 2019. People are preparing more meals or meal segments at home than they did back in 2019, whether from scratch or from meal kits. The business-lunch and happy-hour set is now spending more days working (and eating) from home, and the delta variant of the coronavirus is causing anxiety about eating out where it didn’t exist before. That may mean that your once-busy urban location isn’t getting as much traffic and that your suburban location is seeing more delivery and carry-out business. It’s more important than ever to know your guests’ habits – where they are eating, when they are most apt to order a restaurant meal, and what promotions would tempt them to buy a meal or drink from you instead of staying home. Treat each transaction as an opportunity to gather helpful data that you can use to plan your next menu item or promotion – or even your next investment in technology or real estate. At every order, are you gathering information on what items are selling the best and what channels those orders are coming from? Are you incentivizing guests to join your loyalty program and analyzing their orders so you know which promotions are most likely to inspire them to return? Your systems for automatically gathering, understanding and acting upon consumer data are what will help you flex with the fluctuations of the current environment – and better weather whatever challenges might arise down the line.

Find your “kitchen sink” menu item

When supplies are unpredictable and it’s more critical then ever to minimize waste, restaurants need to find ways to make use of every ingredient they have on hand – even when those ingredients are changing week to week and season to season. Being nimble with ingredients – and not necessarily hiding that from customers – can help. As described in a recent Nation’s Restaurant News report about how restaurants will be operating in the near future, Puritan & Company in Boston has gotten creative about adapting its menu to whatever stock it has on hand. The chef there has a $22 dish on the menu dubbed the “kitchen sink” lasagna. It incorporates whatever vegetables the restaurant happens to have available, as well as any excess meat it has at the time the dish is offered. If a kitchen-sink-type dish won’t work on your menu, think about how you might best cross-utilize ingredients across multiple dishes. It minimizes waste, utilizes labor more efficiently and typically improves overall business results. Restaurant brands ranging from McDonald’s to Olive Garden to Taco Bell have trimmed their menus in recent quarters. Instead of turning off customers, the move has improved performance across the board because it has enabled the restaurants to focus on churning out more of its most popular items to larger numbers of people.

How to Maximize Your Menu with Less

If you feel like you need another set of hands in your kitchen, not only are you not alone, but Tyson Foodservice has a variety of ways to give them to you. With a full portfolio of ready-made products that exist to help streamline your menu and make back-of-house life a little easier, you can consider us your own personal prep squad.

From fully customizable to ready to heat and serve, our ingredient chicken and steak products deliver labor and time savings, better yield, and less waste. Additionally, these products are incredibly versatile for usage in applications across the board—from popular favorites to trendy flavor profiles. Click to see how easily these come to life in simple, and incredibly tasty, recipes.

How to Maximize Your Menu with Less