{"id":25711,"date":"2022-09-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/?p=25711"},"modified":"2022-12-14T10:21:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T00:21:51","slug":"analyse-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/blog\/analyse-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyse this"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Prices are rising and staff are scarce, yet clients and diners are still demanding their food at functions to be exceptional. Before we head into the warmer weather and the busy festive season, perhaps it\u2019s time to take a financial health check to determine if what you\u2019re serving is making you a profit.<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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They say behind every great man is a great woman, and behind every successful chef is a well-used spreadsheet. Getting food costs under control is a big priority. If you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re spending on every ingredient on every dish, it\u2019s hard to work out those costs and therefore the profit margin. A column in a spreadsheet for every ingredient gives a snapshot of exact costs. For example, take a fish entr\u00e9e with a 150g piece of fish. Reducing that to a 120g portion doesn\u2019t sound like much, but across 300 pax at a function that is a saving of 9kg. Multiply that across the months and that is a big saving. Excel spreadsheets and myBidfood<\/a>\u2019s menu planning and costing reports are essential kitchen tools.<\/p>

Working out how much labour goes into producing food for events is another cost that can be analysed. If a chef can make 100 tarts an hour and earns $40 an hour, that is a 40-cent labour cost per unit before you start counting the costs of butter, flour, gas and rent. Sometimes it can be more cost-effective to buy some pre-made items such as tart shells. But you will never know until you have done the numbers.<\/p>

It is an old adage, but a good chef watches the plates come back from the dining room to see which items hit the bin. The trash can is where the diner speaks loudest. If there is a lot of mash potato making its way to waste, then perhaps pull back on the pommes pur\u00e9e. If they are leaving some protein then perhaps the serving is too big. If they are not eating a lot of one item perhaps that part of the dish needs to be reviewed. Anything that hits the bin is money you did not have to spend in the first place and it\u2019s time to review the menu before you sell it to the next client.<\/p>

When it comes to finger food, Adam Moore<\/a> has catered for hundreds of thousands of guests on land and sea with his work in the cruise industry. The freelance chef is also a regular on Network Ten\u2019s Studio 10. Adam suggests using protein judiciously and to have strict portion control on every piece of pricey flesh. \u201cStart with protein with wow factor but mix it with less expensive ingredients.\u201d He gives the example of using a prawn, but chopping it with celery, onion and herbs, dressing it in a Marie Rose sauce and using that mix to fill a small milk bun. Another suggestion is making salami shooters with stoned olives and pesto dressing. \u201cYou can do simple things but do them well,\u201d says Adam. \u201cTake a Yorkshire pudding and fill it with fine slices of rare beef but bulk it out with a bitter green salad and an outstanding horseradish mayo.\u201d<\/p>

Adam also suggests starting canap\u00e9s with carbs and building in flavour towards protein. \u201cYou could start with a beautiful demitasse or a little bowl of the most sensational pasta, perhaps with flecks of truffle and truffle oil. There is a lot of theatre. A little dish with big impact and low cost,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it is essential the front-of-house team is educated on how to sell the magic and the story of the dish to the punters.\u201d He says that a fun event could start with popcorn dressed in your own secret blend of herbs and spices (and nutritional yeast).<\/p>

\u201cThe integration of the canap\u00e9s into the seated part of the meal relies on communicating what the offer is on the night,\u201d says Adam. \u201cLetting the customers know how much they are going to eat lets them understand that perhaps more of the meal will be served as canap\u00e9s and will encourage them to eat well at the beginning and take the pressure off the costings on the mains.\u201d<\/p>

Adam also suggests making the most of rich sauces to bulk out protein, such as pulled lamb shoulder in a rich gravy, or jus, served in a tartlet, as opposed to stuffing it into a larger format casing. He says to pimp mayonnaise to make it super tasty so more of the flavour comes from the dressing and not the protein. He is a big fan of bacon jam, made from bacon offcuts.<\/p>

Adam says to make sure every part of the menu pays for itself. \u201cYou have to have every member of staff on board when it comes to keeping margins in hand,\u201d he says. From the prep team to the back-of-house to the front-of-house. They all need to be aware of what you as the team leader are thinking, planning and serving as part of a profitable menu.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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As seen in Spring 2022<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSee more<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Prices are rising and staff are scarce, yet clients and diners are still demanding their food at functions to be exceptional. Before we head into the warmer weather and the busy festive season, perhaps it\u2019s time to take a financial health check to determine if what you\u2019re serving is making you a profit. They say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-inspiration-trends"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25711"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26539,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25711\/revisions\/26539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}