Increase the profitability of your menu

Tips for improving profit margin

A little goes a long way. When working with your proteins, consider cuts such as streaky bacon. That can easily be added cheaply to a sauce for a pasta or gnocchi dish to create a meat dish on the menu. Then of course, you can simply swap the bacon out to make it vegetarian so you have multiple options available.

How you describe the dish on your menu does half the job for you. Say things like “with fresh rustic garlic sourdough” which really makes a dish sound quality, but the reality is that it’s just adding a cost effective garlic bread to the side of the dish. Easy win!

Reduce food costs

Cheap cuts are all well and good, but when you put labour/skill and energy overheads into the mix, it can be tricky to achieve the golden egg of higher GP. Instead, come up with solutions of adding smaller amounts of protein to the larger quantities of cheaper carbohydrate.

So what can you do instead:

• Fishcakes are a fantastic way of putting less protein into a dish. The salmon can also be an off cut as a prime centre cut piece is not necessary.

• Shred boneless skinless chicken thighs and add to a noodle dish

• Dice chicken breast and add to a pie mix – you could use cheaper frozen diced chicken instead of a prime fillet of chicken

• Use frozen vegetables for pies instead of fresh as this reduces prep time, waste and costs too

• Instead of buying all the ingredients for sauces, use ready to use sauces instead. It allows better consistency, cuts labour and simplifies recipes.

Premiumise your menu

Add quality sounding ingredients but use them sparingly. It’s a perfect way of adding a premium feel to a dish and it allows you to really sell the dish on your menu description too.

Here’s some examples that work really well:

• You could add black truffle oil to your mushroom tagliatelle

• Wild mushrooms could be mixed with button for your chicken pie.

• You could perhaps chop up some tiger prawns and turn a Salmon Fishcake into a Salmon and Tiger Prawn Fishcake

Our support for increasing GP of your menu

As well as having the right range and food offering to maximise your sales, one way in which you can make more money on your menu is by cutting costs where possible without losing what makes your menu stand out. One of the best ways you can do this is by looking at cheaper product alternatives that are very similar and offer a cost saving, but don’t compromise on quality.

We have over 1,000 own brand products within our range that offer significant savings when compared to branded equivalents and we benchmark our own brand against the leading brand as well as our competitors from a quality perspective. For back of house products, our own brand is a fantastic cost saving solution.

Our procurement team are always on hand to support you with cutting costs where possible. We look at gap analyses based on insights and trends to understand where customers can maximise sales opportunities, plus we regularly update customers with our Navigator Report which keeps you in the loop on market factors on foodservice so you can make informed decisions on purchasing.