10 Tips for More Profitable Portion Control

Left over creativityLearning to efficiently “cascade” left-over food assembly components is a key strategy, as long as the components have been stored according to best practice HACCP guidelines. For example…

What can you do with left over French toast? This is pretty easy for anyone who has been in the food business for a while. It can be rotated into bread pudding.

What can you do with left over cake? How about those left over pieces of cake and the ones that have broken or crumbled? One thrifty operator I knew had a secret recipe she used to turn them into her signature spice cake. She mixed it, added a little TLC, and presto!

Expand your menu without adding inventoryThe use of one meat item to create multiple menu items will give you a sharp edge on controlling your inventory, shrink, waste and food cost.

Trying to offer too many kinds of foods on a menu unnecessarily increases your food costs and food waste. It also makes it more difficult to use up certain food ingredients while they are still fresh.

As the costs of operating a business in today's economy increases, the already slim margin for profit narrows. Keeping the ingredients on hand for a larger than necessary menu is very expensive both in dollar outlay and in wastage.

Consider how many items are needed for the following burger menu, even though each item starts out with a half-pound ground beef patty:

Basic burger Lettuce and tomato

Cheese burger Choice of sliced Swiss, American or cheddar cheese

British burger Choice of cheese and bacon strips

Mushroom burger Topped with sautéed mushrooms

Onion burger Smothered with grilled onions

Hickory burger BBQ flavor with cheddar cheese

Cajun burger Grilled with spicy seasonings

Mexican burger Cheese and jalapenos

Chili burger Chili and cheddar cheese

It is a common experience when you hire a new chef he or she always want to add some new items to the menu. It is good practice to emphasize the impact new items can have on inventory needs and costs, and the value there is in keeping changes simple!

Cooking your profits awayOvercooking meat is a good way to lose a considerable amount of money through shrinkage. Roast beef should be cooked for a longer period of time at a lower temperature. For example, if you use 150 lbs. of roast beef per week and extended that consumption for a year, usage would total 7,500 lbs.

7,500 lbs. of roast beef cooked at 425°F would shrink 35%, providing a net weight of 4,875 lbs. If you instead cooked the same 7,500 lbs. at 325°F, it would only shrink 25% and would have a net weight of 5,625 lbs., a gain of 750 lbs.!

If you are selling the meat for $2.50/lb., that represents $1,875 in lost revenue. (This is one reason “slow cook” ovens can often quickly pay for themselves in high volume operations).

In a conventional oven, the best way to tell when roast beef is done is to insert a thermometer into the roast's center; when it reaches the desired doneness, take the meat out of the oven. If you are cooking several pieces at a time, place the thermometer in the smallest piece, when that is done, pull it out of the oven and put the thermometer into the next largest piece.

Call in a “Belly Buster”If the sign over your hot dog says “Quarter Pounder,” it has to be 4 ounces. But you have to really look closely to see the difference between 4-to-the-pound and 5-to-the-pound hot dogs. However, there are 10 more hot dogs in each 10 pound box of the latter. That considerably lowers your portion cost if you extend it to the amount used annually. If you switch from a 4-to-the-pound to a 5-to-the-pound frank, it's the same as buying 10 boxes and getting one free.

Money down the drainMany meat products have water added to lower the cost. Every time we go to the sink, cut open a bag and pour off the water, it is the same as pouring money down the drain. For example, if a ham, after sitting in the cooler for a few days, develops an excessive amount of water in the bag, it should be tested.

Water in ham is a good thing, as it lowers the cost. However, if water-injected hams are not properly handled, they will end up costing you money. For example if you take several hams out of a box and stack them on top of one another in a cooler, those on the bottom get the juice squeezed out of them.

To do a test, take the original weight paid for the ham, drain off the “purge,” and then weigh the product again. Divide the gross weight into the net weight to get your percent of yield. If the yield is 95% and you paid for 15,000 lbs., you only received 14,250 usable pounds and have poured 750 lbs. down the drain. At $3 per pound, that comes to $2,250. Ouch!

Bacon is bacon. Or is it?The slice count is extremely important when deciding which bacon to use. If you have a 15-lb. box of bacon that costs $2 per lb., the slice count will have a large effect on the portion cost. A 14/18 slice count (meaning 14/18 slices per pound) will have 240 slices per box and the cost of 3 slices will be $ .375. An 18/22 slice count will have 300 slices per box and the portion cost of 3 slices will be $ .30. A 22/26 slice count will have 360 slices in the same 15 pound box and the portion cost will drop to $ .25. A 26/30 slice count will have 420 slices with a portion cost of only $ .21.

Bacon is often used more as a seasoning than as a meat item. If bacon is used this way on a sandwich, it does not need to be very thick. A 22/26 or even a 26/30 will work.

Another important point is the desired thickness. Many operators are buying a large belly 14/18 slice count and think that if they use an 18/22 it will be too thin. By using a smaller belly and a higher slice count, the bacon will still be thick, it will just be a little shorter. This one point can save an operator several thousand dollars.

Just looking at the slice count can make considerable difference. If we were using 75 lbs. of 14/18 bacon per week and paying $2 per lb., the portion cost would be $ .125. If you go to 18/22 bacon, your portion cost would be $ .10. Seventy five pounds per week of the 14/18 means we use 1500 slices per week at a cost of $187.50. One thousand five hundred slices of the 18/22 slice count would cost us $150, a $37.50 per week savings. If we looked at that on annual basis that represents a $1,950 savings for the year.

Why deal with all that grease?The theory behind precooked bacon is, first of all, no grease. This saves on clean up as well as freight, keeping in mind that bacon is 50 to 60 percent fat. For an operator using 75 pounds of bacon per week, that means over one ton of grease that has to be removed per year.

Another advantage is no broken slices, which saves on waste. Precooked bacon only takes one minute to cook, making it an excellent product for a sandwich shop as it can be put in a microwave. And because it's pre-cooked, there's much less chance of accidentally overcooking a batch, reducing the likelihood of waste. It also has a long shelf life and very seldom will spoil. To compare the price, find the price of a 15 lb box of 18/22 slice count, which will also have 300 slices.

BONUS TIP!Taking the squal out of ham pricesThe terms we see on the ham labels all have specific meanings. Cooked means the internal temperature has been brought up to 140 degrees. Fully cooked means the internal temperature has been brought up to 148 degrees; and Baked means both that the internal temperature has been brought up to 170 degrees and that it was cooked in dry heat.

The term Smoked means it was exposed to smoke generated from hard wood. If the label says “liquid smoke,” it means that smoke flavor has been added. Sugar Cured means the sugar used had to be at least 50% cane or beet sugar.