Category: Expenses
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Restaurant Utility Costs: Benchmarks and How to Cut Them
Utilities are a fixed presence on the restaurant P&L — electricity, gas, water, and waste removal showing up month after month with quiet consistency. Because they do not spike dramatically in the way a bad food cost week or a high-overtime payroll period does, they tend not to attract the…
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Restaurant Cleaning Costs: How Much Should You Be Spending?
Cleaning in a restaurant is not optional, not deferrable, and not separable from the guest experience. A clean restaurant is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator. But like most baseline expenses, cleaning costs can drift — upward through poor contract management and unnecessary services, or downward through underinvestment that creates…
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Knowing Your Gross Profit: The Number Between Revenue and Everything Else
Gross profit sits in the middle of the P&L — after revenue, before operating expenses — and it is one of the most important figures on the statement. It tells you how much money remains after you have paid for the product you sold, before you have paid for anything…
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Supplier Relationships: How to Turn Purchasing Into a Competitive Advantage
Most restaurant operators think of their food and beverage suppliers primarily as vendors — companies that deliver product on a schedule and send an invoice. The relationship is transactional: you order, they deliver, you pay. This is a workable arrangement. It is also a significant missed opportunity. A well-managed supplier…
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Restaurant Staffing Needs: Building the Team Your Model Requires
Staffing a restaurant is one of the most consequential operational decisions an operator makes, and it is one that gets made repeatedly — every week, every season, every time someone joins or leaves the team. The difference between a staffing model that supports the financial goals of the business and…
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Supplier Rebates: The Hidden Revenue Most Restaurant Operators Leave Behind
Supplier rebates are one of the most consistently underutilized financial opportunities in independent restaurant operations. They are not widely discussed, not prominently marketed by distributors, and not tracked by most operators — which is precisely why the operators who do track and capture them gain a meaningful and invisible cost…
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Distribution Channels in Restaurants: How Your Food Gets from Farm to Plate
The path from a farm or manufacturer to a restaurant plate passes through a distribution system that most operators interact with daily but rarely examine strategically. Understanding how food distribution works — who the players are, how pricing is structured, and where operators have the most leverage — is the…
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Inventory Management in Restaurants: The Discipline That Controls Food Cost
Food cost percentage is the metric most restaurant operators watch closely. Inventory management is the practice that actually determines it. Without consistent, accurate inventory tracking, your food cost number is a guess — and decisions made on guesses tend to produce outcomes that confirm how unreliable guessing is. Inventory management…
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Ideal Food Cost and Waste Management
Waste management is a critical consideration in the restaurant business, directly affecting the bottom line. It’s essential to have a waste target, and like other key performance indicators, it requires careful monitoring and control. Measuring waste can be approached in several ways. One practical method is to assess what is…
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Packaging and Other COGS: The Hidden Costs Inside Your Food Cost Percentage
Cost of goods sold in a restaurant is typically discussed in terms of food and beverage — the ingredients that make up the menu. But COGS is broader than that, and in restaurants with meaningful takeout, delivery, or catering volume, packaging costs can become a significant line item that deserves…