Restaurant Cost Control: How to Get the Best Return on Your Investment

In such a competitive industry, your success is directly proportional to your restaurant's cost control. Running a business implies spending a lot of money and, if you want to enjoy a profit at the end of the month, you have to control where every penny goes.

In this article, you will find efficient tips to help you control and lower your restaurant's costs to run a successful business for years to come.

5 Tactics to enforce restaurant cost control

The key to succeeding in the restaurant industry is to find a balance between creating delicious dishes and offering clients an unforgettable experience while still maintaining the costs low. Use the strategies for restaurant cost control:

1. Make your menu shorter

The more items on your menu, the more money you have to spend on different ingredients. Moreover, you may lose sight of all the ingredients and some may go bad, costing you a lot of money.

Furthermore, clients don’t trust a very big menu because they don’t believe you can guarantee freshness when you have to cook so many different dishes. Customers also get choice paralysis when confronted with a lot of choices and may not want to order.

If you want to create an easy-to-use restaurant menu that you can update as many times as you want for free, use the GloriaFood menu maker:

Read more: How to Write a Menu for a Restaurant: Complete Guide with Examples

2. Reduce your portion sizes

Do you notice that clients often leave food on your plates? Then your portions may be too big. For efficient restaurant cost control, why not reduce your portion sizes so you can feed more clients with the same amount of ingredients?

It’s a win-win situation for you because you increase revenue while decreasing food waste.

You can still allow clients to order a bigger portion by adding sizes to your menu. For example, offering a pizza in sizes S, M, and L. If you want to further increase profit, add toppings to your menu. They are a high-profit margin item and clients get to create their perfect dish.

Read more: How to Customize Your Restaurant’s Menu: The Easy Way

3. Take advantage of free and cheap technology

Technology can make your and your employees' work easier while providing a better experience for your customers. But you don't have to spend all your budget on tech, you can take advantage of free or cheap software to ensure restaurant cost control.

You will need:

• An online ordering system: having a physical location is a good start, but if you want to increase your revenue, you must find the best way to sell your food online.
• A sales-optimized website: when you increase your online visibility, you attract more clients and increase your profit.
• A table reservation system: don’t waste your staff’s time by having them answer the phone, allow clients to book a table in a few clicks directly on your website.

How to get an online ordering system

GloriaFood’s online ordering system will streamline your ordering process, making it easy both for you to accept and manage orders and for clients to place them.

Do you want to know the best part? It is free! Here is what you must do to start accepting online orders in no time:

• Sign up and fill in your restaurant’s information;
• Create an attractive menu, complete with mouth-watering descriptions and amazing photos (if you don’t have any yet, you get access to an extensive gallery on our platform);
• Publish the ordering button on your website (or opt for the website we provide that already has the button incorporated, find out more about it in the next section);
• Download our order-taking app on iOS or Android;
• Enjoy your new stream of business!

Check out this video to see how easy it is to set up online ordering for your restaurant:

How to get a sales-optimized website

You can use our online ordering system to generate your sales and SEO-optimized website in less than 10 minutes. Here are the video instructions:

Our restaurant website builder is extremely easy to use, costs about the same as a pizza, and can help you go live by tonight. Here are the benefits you will enjoy if you sign up:

• Clean one-page template, that guides the client to the important information. The menu button is highlighted so visitors can easily find your menu and start ordering;
• Responsive design, that loads fast on every device, be it mobile or desktop;
• SEO optimization for texts, images, and links, so your website can rank on the first page of Google;
• Built-in ordering system with powerful marketing tools that help grow your restaurant business.

Click here to see a demo version of how your restaurant’s website could look like.

How to get a table reservation system

Time is money, so the more time you can save for your employees, the more money you make when they concentrate on serving and upselling food to clients.

You can get a free table reservation system from GloriaFood by:

• Going to admin -> Setup -> Services & opening hours -> Table reservation;
• Configure the service you want to offer. You can also allow clients to order and pay when they book a table to save even more time;
• Add the code we generate on your website.

Read more: How to Increase Your Restaurant's Profit with an Online Table Booking System

4. Start doing inventory more often

As most restaurants struggle to monitor their food costs, doing inventory more often can help you identify sales trends and avoid over or under-ordering.

You should ideally do inventory weekly and consider using a restaurant inventory system to help you keep better track of your ingredients.

5. Reduce food waste

Any money spent on ingredients that don't make it into the final dishes is wasted money. Moreover, food waste comes with additional disposal costs which can be quite big for a thriving restaurant.

Managing food waste is not only a restaurant cost control strategy. It can also be a marketing tool as environmentally conscious clients will choose your place over the competitors if you boast about your zero waste measures.

Check out these tips for reducing food waste:

• Develop strict stocking rules: always keep your ingredients in closed containers to avoid spoilage and stock the items that are closer to the expiration date at the front;
• Use all parts of the ingredients: get inspired by the nose-to-tail and root-to-flower movement to start incorporating usually ignored parts of the ingredients into your dishes;
• Donate unused ingredients or unsold dishes: collaborate with local charities so unfortunate people can enjoy a great meal;
• Start composting: prevent food waste from going to the landfill by creating a compost bin.

Final words

You should make it a goal to always find new strategies for restaurant cost control if you want to experience an increase in profit from month to month. Focus on lowering the biggest part of your expenses, food costs, and using technology to save time and attract more customers.

You might also like:

• Why Do Restaurants Fail & How to Avoid Being One of the Unlucky Ones
• How to Grow a Restaurant Business: 5 Easy and Cost-Effective Ways to Increase Your Revenue
• Small budget Restaurant Advertising Ideas That Deliver Results