Use Menu Engineering to Combat Rising Food Costs and Inflation - Ep 47
Inflation is hitting home for restaurant owners as the cost of food and other essential products have been on the rise for months. What's a restaurant owner to do? The short answer is it’s time to use menu engineering. In this episode of “The Restaurant Prosperity Formula” podcast, I’m teaching you how to do it in your restaurant.
You’ll have answers to:
- What data and systems you need to get started
- The changes that will have the biggest impact
- How to decide what to increase prices on
- What you need to do personally to make it work
Across the industry, restaurant owners have been raising prices on the menu just to keep up with this record increase in costs. In fact, since the beginning of 2022, your food costs have risen at such a fast pace that if you haven’t made changes to your menu by now, you've probably lost 1-3 percentage to food cost. While I have no problem raising prices, especially on your top one, two or three items in each section, it’s getting dangerously close to a point where your guest looks at what they pay for a meal and it doesn't equal the value of what's on the plate. At some point in time, you won’t be able to just keep raising your prices. That’s what makes menu engineering so important and helpful in the future.
This is a deep dive instructional podcast. If you want to learn the proper way to use menu engineering, listen to this episode closely. You will have to gather data, and you will likely have to take a few pre-menu engineering steps before you can truly benefit from it, but I will take you through it step by step.
I used to promise my members by using menu engineering basics for the first time, most restaurants could drop their food costs by three to seven points. It was magical. But things have changed in today's high inflationary environment to get that kind of change. That kind of movement may require real change to your menu. For example, a lot of restaurant owners get stuck on a few items on their menu and insist they must stay even when this process proves they aren’t worth it. This can be eye opening and it’s best to look at it as a learning process, shifting into that growth mindset.
Menu engineering or re-engineering your menu is one of the biggest strategic planning things you'll ever do as a restaurant owner. With the right information, you can get ahead of rising food costs and inflation, and shift to the proactive management style you need to be successful.
Click the podcast player above to listen in, or you can watch the video on YouTube, click here to download the latest episode.
