Recipes for Success Part III

Now you have an award winning standard recipe book that you need to execute and send it out to Customers and make it profitable, but first you need to cost it and price it out. I’ve uploaded at my LinkedIn profile a standard recipe format for cost and pricing purposes, feel free to download it. http://mx.linkedin.com/in/jorgecalderon09



For a successful recipe costing, the format has to be created with the following elements:



--Name of the dish (the same as your operations recipe)

--Recipe number (has to match your recipe book)

--How many people does it serve (normally is for 1 person)

--Ingredient

--Quantity

--Unit

--Unitary cost, this is quite tricky, as ingredients are sold in many measurements, so you need to convert that measurement to the same that you’re using, in example, if I buy a package of beef that weights 1.6 kilos for $13 dollars, and in my recipe I’m using kilos, then 1 kilo of beef costs me $8.12 dollars, so to cost out .24 kilos of beef (the amount I use for that portion), my portion will cost $1.95 dollars. Some confusion may happen if you are using kilos and grams in the recipe, make it standard to kilos; otherwise your costs won’t be accurate.

--Total cost, just multiply the unitary cost times your measurement unit.

Grand total of cost

--Percentage (the one you are considering on your cost side, normally a 30% is used)

--Price point (if your cost represents 30%, what would your 100% be?)

--Taxes (if apply)

--Sale price

--Rounding (it doesn’t look appealing to see in a menu a price of $13.38, so you round it either lower or higher for menu presentation)





Now you have everything costed and priced, and the true action of producing standard dishes and here are some tips to achieve that:



++Print all pictures and post them through your kitchen as reference

++Ensure that all your kitchen and waiting staff are in the same channel

++Ingredients must have the same quality always, if not, you lost time and money

++Train the staff and teach them about empowerment, this will make them feel even more valuable professionals

++Sell, sell, sell!!!!!!, don’t leave money on the table.