Partnering with a GPO can help you get competitive pricing on supplies for your restaurant such that its profitability increases and its purchasing process becomes more streamlined. Knowing that you are getting the best prices with minimal time and effort will enable you to channel your energy into other facets of running your restaurant. In this post, we’ll outline the different ways partnering with a GPO can help you save money. As a restaurant owner/operator, you are pulled in different directions every other day. You have to attend to various tasks, including personnel training, staffing, menu creation, inventory management, among ...

While you can’t plan for everything, you can anticipate how COVID and government regulations in response to it will affect your business and simultaneously plan your business’s future during and hopefully after the pandemic. It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the economy, but the effects seemed to sting the restaurant industry just a little more. In many states, they were forced to drastically change their operations almost overnight, and unfortunately, many who couldn’t adapt didn’t make it. We know a lot more now than we did in the beginning about the disease and what ...

If you are not familiar with GPOs, you may be wondering what they are and how they can benefit restaurant owners. If your restaurant is currently not part of a GPO, keep reading to learn about just a few of the benefits joining one could provide you with. As any restaurant owner is all too aware, the food service industry is known for having tight margins and high overhead costs, and it doesn’t help that the cost of food shipments is on the rise. You are not alone if, as the owner of a small, independent restaurant, you are looking ...

A restaurant’s order history is a “treasure island”. There are a lot of potential savings opportunities that can be found there, but without procurement, there is no map. Procurement is the strategic combination of Sourcing and Purchasing intended to ensure that the buyer compares Quality, Quantity, Time, and Location for products and services to secure the best possible price.  Let us break it down in simple terms. Sourcing: Purchasing: The main benefit of this process for a buyer is to receive products at the best possible price. Unfortunately, the majority of restaurant operators today do not have any process like ...

There are a few variations of this, but the saying goes something like this. “You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you”. How I came to manage category costs for food, beverages, and supplies. My first job in hospitality came through a friend who was a line cook at a sports bar in Boston called Dockside. It was on lower State street well before the years of the “Big Dig”. He was the pizza man, which instantly made me the “pizza man helper” which really meant that I cleaned the Hobart, and the entire room under the basement stairs ...

In our numerous conversations with restaurant operators who have implemented Back-Of-House systems, we have learned that even though systems are in place, not all features end up being used, and so operational efficiencies are hardly realized. Is all Restaurant Management Software bad?   Everybody is talking about FOH innovations such as menu presentation, food delivery, packaging, contactless ordering, and payments. However, nobody is talking about innovations in BOH management: procurement, cost management, and supplier payments. Chefs and managers are left with century old ways to buy food, beverages, and supplies: call suppliers or suppliers’ websites! Restaurants BOH is the most ...

The model that combines software and service known as SaaS often delivers greater efficiencies. Just like it can be more efficient to hire a plumber who has the skills, tools, and experience to fix your plumbing, we look to services that can deliver highly efficient software solutions which are fully supported. Seems like there are services for everything these days. Paving companies, refrigeration, Electric, graphic design, advertising, hood cleaning, cleaning, pest control, music and even the weekend DJ. Restaurateurs are notorious for taking on DIY jobs sometimes to save money, but often because there is no current better way. If ...