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How to Reduce Costs in A Restaurant (Without Hurting Sales)
How to Reduce Costs in A Restaurant (Without Hurting Sales)
Written by Jayden Smith on Dec. 17th 2020
Do you want to cut down your restaurant expense without hurting sales? Check out these five tips to maximize profitability without compromising on quality.
Gourmet meal and white wine on a restaurant dining table.
Finding success in the restaurant industry isn’t easy. Do you know the profit margin of an average restaurant ranges between three to five percent? With such razor-thin margins, your restaurant is always at risk of going under. The biggest profit killers in the restaurant industry are inventory, staff, and overheads. Here are some tips to reduce costs in a restaurant without hurting your sales:
Budgeting is the key

Create a strict budget for your restaurant and stick to it. It will allow you to reduce costs and prevent overspending. You must go through the budget every month to get clarity into your restaurant expenses. It will also help you identify areas where you can cut costs without compromising quality. For instance, you may need to optimize your inventory, negotiate with suppliers, handle cash more effectively, etc.
A small restaurant menu with a curated list of offerings.
Simplify your menu
Most modern and upscale restaurants are ditching the multi-page menus and moving to small menus with a more curated list of offerings, and for a good reason. It allows them to define their restaurant concept more effectively, improve the kitchen’s efficiency, minimize food and labor costs, save valuable resources, and enhance customers’ experience. Moreover, it also helps reduce food wastage, speaking of which…

Eliminate food wastage
Restaurant food waste amounts to $2 billion in lost profits. Food inventory makes a large percentage of your restaurant’s total expense, so you must take steps to minimize the items that go in the bin. Ask your chef to be creative with the recipes and use off-cuts and extras to prepare other dishes. Reuse the food items that can be reused and avoid overpreparation. Optimizing order processing is the key to cut down food wastage.

Avoid overstaffing
The only thing worse than an understaffed restaurant on the weekend is an overstaffed restaurant all year round. Staffing more employees than you need can result in high overheads, which can eat a sizeable chunk of your profits. Identify peak hours and distribute staff accordingly to minimize labor costs without sacrificing the quality of service. Your order processing software can help you identify rush hours and anticipate demand. 
Customer using smartphones to place an order in a restaurant.
Embrace technology
In today’s digital age, equipping your restaurant with the latest technology is imperative to keep the costs low. Replace your old-traditional ordering system with an advanced ordering system to automate and streamline your orders and payments, improve staff efficiency, and minimize errors. The latest order processing system can help you stick to your budget, avoid food wastage, optimize staffing levels, and improve your restaurant’s bottom line.

QuiQi is a cloud based enterprise food ordering solution that can help reduce your restaurant costs up to 57 percent. The interactive restaurant menu software enables customers to access eMenu, place orders, and make payments using their smartphone, saving your restaurant valuable time and resources. Start Your Free 1-Month Trial Now!

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Make sure to check out our FREE eBook! Discusses the past and the future of ordering and reveals a tested method on how any hospitality & catering business (HoReCa) can increase their profits by 38%.
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About QuiQi
In the HoReCa environment, for most of the businesses, automation, efficiency, and speed are the key factors of their success. An entire industry was created based on these values. One, if not the most, fundamental problem yet to be solved, is the line of communication from the customer to the kitchen and vice versa.
Our objective is to minimize the number of actions needed and therefore maximize the efficiency and the speed of service. Our solution allows users to browse a digital menu, place an order, call a waiter for help, and pay directly from their smartphone.
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About Author: Jayden Smith

Jayden Smith is a professional food critic and restaurant writer based in New Orleans, USA
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