Before opening a restaurant or a bar, you will need to think about picking the most suitable premises, hiring qualified and reliable staff as well as buying the right hospitality equipment among other considerations. After all is done, however, you still have to calculate the best restaurant menu prices for your target group of clients. While many people think that drawing up the menu is one of the easiest tasks for new entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry, it has its challenges.
Remember that a restaurant is a business like any other. What you should be really after at the end of it all, besides the satisfaction of your clients, is your profit. Therefore, you should try and achieve a balance between the cost of your ingredients and the eventual price of the food. Additionally, you will have to ensure that your prices fall within the confines of the local market to avoid pushing yourself out of business.
Cost of Food
How much you charge your customer for a certain dish will be determined by how much you paid for it. Nevertheless, the eventual price of the dish should not be determined by the cost of ingredients alone. Keep in mind that you will have to pay for services such as preparation of the meal and cleaning up after the meal is taken. Further, you will need to pay electricity and water bills. Simply put, the price you set for the meal should comfortably cover the cost of putting it on the table and still leave you a profit.
Controlling Meal Portions
In order to be successful in the hospitality industry, you should have a firm control of the portions of the meals you offer. You should spell out the exact amount of every ingredient to be used in preparation of each type of meal and ensure that your cooks stick to it. To achieve the best results in portion control, use precision scales.
Do not restrict control of the portions to preparation of the meals; also observe it in your servings. In particular, ensure that the volume of plates and cups used for serving the meals are equal. Although they may seem a little bit more expensive, buying pre-portioned items eventually save time and money since you don’t have time spent in measuring is spent doing something else. In addition, it is one of the best ways of avoiding food wastage.
Bottom Line
One of the most common challenges in determining the right restaurant menu prices is fluctuation in the markets. In most cases, the cost of the ingredients used in the meals is determined by seasons and weathers in addition to other factors including electricity and gas prices. While changing the menu may seem a good enough option, it is not really practical since you may have to do it quite often; it might even be after every couple of weeks. The best way, therefore, to tackle this challenge is to find a way of balancing items that are usually expensive and whose prices are likely to fluctuate with items whose prices are usually stable.
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