| Thursday, November 21, 2024 | CONTACT |
Add $1,000 or More to Your Business's bottom Line in 30 Days!
Buying some products at cash & carry outlets
Sometime you can find incredible saving on products at wholesale food warehouses (like Costco, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, etc.). The savings should be significant to justify your, or your employee's time to go shopping for these items.
Here's a hot tip that will save you significant cash, and is worth your time. Recently I was shopping at Costco, and noticed that they were selling milk for $3.78 for 2-1 gallon containers. That's $1.89 a gallon! With milk typically costing $2.89 a gallon (or more), this represents a savings of $1.00 or more per gallon (and yes, the milk steamed fine). If you go through 15 gallons of milk a day, this represents a monthly savings of $450, or more (getting you almost half way to your $1,000 a month increase in bottom line, with switching your source for only one product). $450 x 12 months = $5,400. annual savings. I'll go to Costco twice a week to pull an additional $5K+ to my bottom line, and you should too!
Consider lowering quality slightly on some products to save money
Now, I am a strong believer in using the highest quality products possible, and I would never sacrifice the quality of any of my key ingredients. But, there are some things you might be able to downgrade on slightly, while not upsetting your customers.
If you are using a very high quality, expensive paper cup, consider going down just one level of quality. Some customers might notice, but as long as their beloved cup content hasn't changed, it's doubtful that you will hear many complaints. (Note: the industry "big boys" aren't using fancy cups, and it hasn't hurt their business!) Saving a couple of pennies per cup can really add up. If you serve 200 hot drinks a day, this amounts to a $4.00 per day savings; $120 per month, $1,440 per year.
Look for other items where you might trade off some quality to gain extra savings. Are you buying name brand Equal, Splenda, and Sweet ‘n Low, or are you saving by buying your foodservice purveyor's house brand instead (it's the same stuff). Or, maybe you are using expensive sandwich meats. If you are buying Black Forrest ham, but could save a couple of buck a pound by going to a conventional deli ham, would anybody really notice? Maybe, if they ate a slice of each side by side, but if it's going on a sandwich, with cheese, mustard, and pickles, I truly doubt it!
Case in point: 20 years ago I owned a nouveau Mexican restaurant, featuring gourmet, hand made, regional specialties. We pressed our own corn tortilla by hand, fire roasted Poblano chiles for our rellenos, and made homemade tamales. When I had cut expenses everywhere I could think of to maximize my profitability, and push came to shove, I decided to try a canned chile for my chile rellenos. I also decided that I would switch to a premade frozen tamale. Switching to these two convenient products would save me about 3 hours of labor a day (a major savings, $7 hr. x 3 = $21 x 30 days = $630 savings per month; $7,560 a year, not including the saved payroll taxes associated with that labor). When I tasted these menu items made with the new ingredients, there was no comparison in my mind. They weren't nearly as good as what I had been making from scratch, and I prepared myself for the irate customer fallout that I was sure would follow. To my surprise, (and quite frankly my disappointment), no one ever said a word, and my sales of these items never dropped a bit. No one noticed, or cared!
Once you have sourced the best prices for your products, you'll need to manage those products after they have entered your store. The value of the products you purchase can be greatly diminished if they are not handled and used properly. This can happen in a number of ways: