Chip away at avoidable overhead costs Though the cost of food and labor tend to make the most headlines when it comes to current industry challenges, those aren’t the only budget line items on the minds of restaurant operators right now. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2023 State of the Industry Report, a commanding majority of respondents are spending much more on overhead costs – including those for insurance, utilities, licenses and other items a restaurant needs to run – than they were a few years ago. While some costs are out of an operator’s control, there are a number of expenses that can be minimized with some planning. Consider insurance, for one. In addition to simply shopping around for the best quote, you can take steps to position your business for a better deal. While insurance prices are increasing across the board, insurers will provide better terms to a risk-aware business. Demonstrate your sound risk management by ensuring your fire alarm, sprinkler system and security cameras are up to date and functioning well. Document your staff’s safety training and provide evidence of your strong (or improved) accident record. If you do have a solid safety history, consider increasing your deductibles so you pay lower premiums each month. If your business has made major changes to its physical premises or how it operates, make sure you update your policies to account for those adjustments so you can avoid gaps in your coverage. Finally, if you’re in the market for several types of insurance, such as liability, property and cyber protection, for example, look for a provider who can offer a bundled package that can save you money – and ensure they have a solid record on claims payment. The past few years have been a time of reinvention for restaurants and now, amidst inflation and with a likely recession ahead, restaurant brands need to be creative and resourceful to remain in business. Virtual brands, once touted as a helpful means of diversifying business when dining rooms had to close, have now been around long enough for more nuanced assessments to emerge. Michael Jacobs, co-founder and the original CEO of Ordermark and someone who helped conceive of Nextbite, recently told The Spoon that virtual brands are hardly a lifeboat for a restaurant that is floundering. Really, their value lies in expense savings – benefiting from joint purchasing power and shared business resources. They may well make good business sense, though mostly for restaurants that can identify several complementary brands that have similar needs. Call Team Four Foodservice to find out how they can help you leverage your buying power. Restaurant operators are feeling the pinch from all directions right now – double the unemployment of the general economy, widespread supply shortages and inflationary woes. One recent study found that 64 percent of consumers plan to cut back on their restaurant spending. Amid these challenges, many restaurant brands are trying to reconfigure their physical operations to accommodate the new ways in which consumers are demanding restaurant food. Some formerly full-service restaurants are converting to fast-casual or quick-service models. Others are expanding drive-through lanes, adding windows dedicated to third-party delivery pickup or otherwise making off-premise orders a bigger priority. But all of this costs money – and something has to give. In your operation, what might that be? Amid the strains of the times, there are also opportunities, as well as more companies looking to offer them. In a recent webinar, Morgan Petty of the Interactive Customer Experience Association moderated a discussion with representatives from Steritech and Zaxby’s about how restaurant operators might leverage current market disruptions to improve the brand experience they offer guests. Steritech, for one, is now supporting clients in the midst of remodeling by offering up its specialists to visit client restaurant sites around the country, take photos of every item that an onsite real estate team from the restaurant would normally want to inspect, then upload those photos to an online portal for review by the restaurant. The company says across 500 site visits, it has given restaurant clients back more than 500 hours and reduced their labor cost by 70 percent. Everyone is having to find creative ways to reduce spending, do more with less labor, or otherwise be more efficient with resources right now. What priorities are you managing that can be addressed in modified ways? At the time of this writing, it had just been announced that Congress would not be replenishing the Restaurant Revitalization Fund as part of the omnibus spending bill, which would have given about 200,000 foodservice businesses a critical lifeline to help manage the ongoing challenges the industry continues to face. So what now? Stephani Robson, an emeritus professor at Cornell University who studies the restaurant industry, recently said the pandemic’s biggest lesson for restaurants has been to “be lean.” Surely you’re already doing a lot of that, or aiming for it, but can more be done? To be sure, technology can help in the effort, but only if implemented in ways that make life easier and faster for guest and staff alike, and can be scaled up, scaled back or otherwise adapted when the operation needs to change. Does your technology ensure you don’t have too many staff working a shift? That you don’t accumulate food waste before a dish ever reaches a guest? That you can make incremental adjustments with ease when you’re short on a key ingredient and you need to incentivize guests to try another dish? If you can follow the waste in your operation – whether in food, time, staff or other resources – you may find some practices that can be improved and made leaner. Ask Team Four for help in uncovering them. |
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