Culina Salus

4 Ways to improve your profit margin by Culina Salus

Price

Try not to compete on price as you never know how deep the pockets of the competition are, they may have large reserves of capital and be able to sustain losses, sustained from price cuts, you may not be able to afford this. In a price war, nobody wins, apart from the customer who does not care about your costs.
So, focus on explaining the value you are delivering to the customer, cheap is not always the best.
When you compete on price,you cannot provide good customer service or a quality product and you end up creating the feeling that your product is cheap. Not an impression that is desirable in the food industry.

Costs
Cost control should be a regular activity, not done once a year or when the shit hits the fan.
When looking at your costs, can you negotiate better prices with all your suppliers? Can you substitute products? Maybe you can get better prices without compromising on quality.
Do all your staff need to work full time? Maybe part timers will better suit the busy periods of your business?
Look through your bank statements, and make sure that you don't have any direct debits for products and services that you no longer require.
Know exactly how much every product you sell, costs to produce and sell, make sure you have a costing sheet for every recipe. The devil is in the details.

Up sell profitable menu items
Another method for improving your profit margins is to promote the most profitable items that you sell.
Identify the most profitable items and promote them well. Your staff should always ask the customer if they would like to go large, if they order a drink or large fries with their order. McDonald's, employ up-selling all the time, always asking if you want a drink, or a larger meal.
You already have the customer ordering food, ready to spend money with you,why not try to make them spend more?
Keep in mind that the most profitable items are not always the most expensive. The more of these items that are sold, the higher your profit margins will be higher.
Your staff should not just be taking orders and serving food. They should be actively selling your products. Their job is to get customers to spend more than they intended.
Up-selling should be part of your staff training, after all your staff are your biggest cost.

Meal deals

Customers also love to feel like they are getting a great deal. One excellent way to increase your restaurant profit margin is to offer bundled meals. A well-designed meal deal or box meals simplifies ordering for customers in a hurry.
Meal deals and combo's makes ordering easy for customers and drives sales of higher-margin menu items
like drinks and chips.