Something is lurking in your trash. If you’re lucky, it’s money: Many foodservice operators who have changed their approach to trash disposal have minimized waste when it comes to both food and finances. (There’s a lot of waste to reduce: According to a 2014 study by the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, more than 84 percent of unused food in American restaurants is thrown away — and while those figures have likely improved in the past few years, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.) Restaurantowner.com suggests several tips to help operators take charge of their trash. First, remove trash bins from the kitchen — even as a temporary experiment — and give each employee a clear, labeled bin to be filled with food scraps or trimmings they want to discard during food prep. Following the shift, have a manager inspect the contents of each box for usable product. If any is found, the manager can provide on-the-spot training to that employee to make sure usable product isn’t wasted in the future. Inspecting bins in the dish room can be helpful too: Make sure china, silverware and other expensive tableware aren’t getting damaged or accidentally tossed out. Finally, monitor your dumpster, which can provide easy cover for a dishonest employee. It’s a common practice in the industry for someone looking to steal a case of wine to hide it in the dumpster only to retrieve it later. Having a manager approve who takes out the trash and when, or even monitor the dumpster via video, can help protect your business from those losses. (Want to talk trash? Contact Team Four about how your operation can save on trash disposal.)

There’s a lot of room for cost savings in your inventory. Are you making the most of it? RestaurantOwner.com has some tips (and Team Four can help you incorporate systems to manage them if you need assistance). First off, make sure you have detailed specifications on every product you buy. They can be useful when comparing bids from suppliers and gaining a better understanding of where you might be able to get a less expensive product to deliver results similar to a more expensive one. Next, lower your inventory levels. If you’re like most operators, you have more food on your shelves than you actually need. It pays to assess your inventory by product, then reorder based on how much of that product you are likely to use, plus a bit added just in case. By cutting back on your excess inventory, you demonstrate to your team that portion control and precision are important. As a result, waste and spoilage should become less of a problem. Finally, list the 10 to 15 items that comprise the majority of your food cost and take a daily inventory of those items. At the start of each day, tally the opening quantity you have on hand for every product. Add any purchases you make that day, then at closing, count your ending inventory. Add your starting amount and purchases, then subtract your ending amount to get the amount of product that was used that day. Compare that figure with your POS product usage report. If your actual usage exceeds the usage tracked on your POS, you could have a problem with theft, over-portioning or another issue that needs adjustment right away.

Mining your data will take you far in predicting your sales and labor needs, but it may not cover all your bases. Factors that are a little less predictable — like a Nor’easter, for example — can catch you unprepared. In addition to monitoring the weather, Upserve advises you to keep tabs on a number of other factors that can send your business on a wild ride if you don’t prepare. At a time when delivery is on the rise, watch for promotions from third-party providers and prepare for a potential spike in delivery business when they offer discounts. Also keep an eye on local events that might bump up your foot traffic and bring in guests from out of town who wouldn’t normally be filling your dining area. Economic factors like fuel prices can have an impact, too, perhaps causing a dip in your dining room business if not business overall.

​As technology infuses so many parts of the restaurant industry — and as restaurant brands expand to additional locations — operators may wonder if the connection to consumers suffers in the process, or if the brand could become watered down when consistency-driven processes take over. Sweetgreen is one example of a brand that has kept its guest connections strong through its adoption of technology and physical expansion. Nathaniel Ru, the brand’s cofounder and chief brand officer, calls it delivering “intimacy at scale.” It’s about delivering healthy, real food at scale without losing a local, personal touch. For Ru, that has meant thinking creatively about the supply chain at times. As First Round Review reports, when a winter storm wiped out the peach crop in New England a few years ago, Sweetgreen (in the midst of summer menu planning at the time) had to adjust. Its popular goat-cheese-and-peach bowl was no longer a viable option, so the dish was reinvented in a way that both accounted for supply chain challenges and bonded with consumers. Sweetgreen substituted locally grown strawberries and blueberries for the peaches, changed the name of the dish to the Patriot Bowl and sold it in the northeast, where it quickly became a guest favorite. Ru advises other operators looking to deliver intimacy at scale to keep things simple, from limiting the number of core values to numbers of locations. When you’re ready to expand to a new location, don’t use the same playbook — study the demographics, buying patterns, traffic patterns and basic vibe of each community first. Next, be modular — expect change and build any new locations to account for future adjustments to menus, décor, ambiance and other factors. Finally, collaborate with people and companies that feel like a natural fit — from chefs to musicians to farms — and can help you retain and reinforce the character of a store.

Prepare to be shocked: The restaurant industry is known for its unusually thin profit margins (Toast suggests they range from 0 to 15 percent, with most restaurants falling between 3 and 5 percent). Okay, that probably sounds pretty familiar, but as with most other areas of your operation, your data can help you uncover surprising areas of waste and make best use of the profits you do have by tracking your profit and loss, as well as your projected and actual cash flow and cost. FSR Magazine advises collecting information on such costs as your rent and utilities, wages, revenues within a set time period, cost of raw materials, number of items sold and the average cost per item, total food cost, cash flow projections and profit. Reports from your POS can provide the most detailed information here, but also look to your credit card processor to identify trends, as well as records from third-party delivery providers.