The Half a Million Pounds Lesson: A Story About Portion Control
Here is a story about Paul.
Paul, a Food and Manager Supervisor for a multi-site Hospitality operator, was in need to implement a new menu, including pizzas, a very popular item that they were preparing from scratch, but facing continues issues: lack of staff, consistency, and poor quality…
As part of his job, Paul had to plan what pizzas to sell and how much to charge for each item.
“I need to consult with an expert.” said Paul. “Where can I find the top hospitality pizza experts in the country?
Luckily for Paul, he was just about to attend a business networking event: the Food and Drink operations by Atom Business Event…
Sure enough, one of the exhibitors was offering exactly what Paul needed.
This is where Paul met the Pizza Chefs of PizzaSi…
With PizzaSi guidance, Paul did the analysis of his current pizza offering
Paul structured menu pricing to achieve 29% food cost.
The current staff was considered prepared and honest, but with no daily reminder from a supervisor, and no measurement of portioning, everyone decided to just add a little bit more of cheese and toppings…
At the end, the food cost on pizzas was at least 2.5% higher.
That was estimated to equate an increase in costs of £5,000 for the year per site = £50,000
But Paul was too busy looking after all the sites, staff, suppliers, to notice.
Without a consistent process for making pizzas and no measuring tools, Paul was making less profit than planned on pizza, plus the cost of extra staff employed to make pizzas.
What did Paul learn?
When Paul turned to PizzaSi he understood that consistency and quality could be achieved by minimising the human factor, while offering an easy portion control solution and an authentic, award-winning pizza to their guest
In addition to that, PizzaSi’ helped Paul coming up with three tools for its sites.
- Visual Aids
- Scales
- Ideal Food Cost
Visual Aids
Although Paul had a training manual, and written procedures for how to make a pizza, the manual sat on the shelf most of the time. “How can I remind pizza makers what pizza should look like if I can’t be next to them every day?” thought Paul. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, it is certainly worth 1,000 pepperonis. If you sell 200 pizzas in a day, and the pie makers put five extra pepperonis on each pizza, you are short 1,000 pepperonis for that day. Paul took pictures of his pizzas and posted them at the makeline. Pizza makers did not have to weigh ingredients or count slices of meats. They simply made the pizza look like the picture. That was easy.
Scales
Cheese is gold in the pizza business. Cheese cost is usually one-third of the cost to make a pizza. Paul discovered there were two primary methods used by successful pizzerias to control cheese cost. Paul tested with PizzaSi cups. The pizza makers were required to use one cup of PizzaSi’ Mozzarella cheese for every pizza.
This worked perfectly. That was easy.
Ideal Food Cost
Paul’s POS system had an option for ideal food cost and inventory. The POS company said that although this was part of every POS package, fewer than five % of their customers utilized that portion of their package. It seemed like a daunting task to implement until Paul realized that 80 % of the food cost was from 20 % of the ingredients. Paul started with just those ingredients: meats and cheeses. With the help of the POS company, Paul programmed recipes for his menu in a single day. Then Paul had his manager’s input purchases and inventory every week. The POS system told Paul he was no longer short 1,000 pepperonis each day. That was easy.
Paul still runs 10 sites, with over £10M in sales and estimates that using PizzaSi and these three tools – that he then extended to all other items on his menus, will equate to approximately half a million pounds in cost savings by the end of next year.
That is the Half a Million Pound Lesson.
Paul decided to give himself a daily reminder of the importance of portion control.
“What if I wrapped my car in pepperoni?” thought Paul.
Sure enough, Paul did exactly that to his Jaguar….
How many pepperonis are on the Pepperoni Jag?
I will give you a hint. Enough to make 14 perfect 12” Pepperoni Pizzas!
If you are struggling to deliver a profitable, low skill and with no-compromise-on-quality pizza offering, we can help!
PizzaSi is the Pizza Solution for the Hospitality industry; ask our Pizza expert to support by developing with you a winning pizza offer.
We also have a new range of toppings – we really are your ONE STOP SOLUTION!
Check out our Pepperoni here
Our PizzaSi account managers are on hand to work with you on helping your business go from survival to thrive, we have options that we can offer you that will support your journey back to full operation.
Contact us on 0208 1472600, visit our websites, or email us on:
UK: sales@pizzasi.co.uk – www.pizzasi.co.uk
Ireland: info@pizzasi.ie – www.pizzasi.ie
Benelux: marcel@pizzasi.eu – www.pizzasi.eu
IN PIZZA WE CRUST!
