5 tips for controlling your commercial and institutional catering costs

Analyze and plan your menus

Managing your menus (in commercial catering) or menu cycles (in institutional catering) is fundamental to controlling costs.

• Calculate your material costs as accurately as possible: Use detailed, valued technical sheets to know the exact cost of each dish. This is essential for setting the prices that will guarantee your profitability in the medium and long term.
• Also focus on local and seasonal produce: Better for your health and a source of customer satisfaction, buying local is often cheaper by optimizing your transport costs.
• Think in cycles: Establish menu cycles in advance; this anticipation will enable you to better forecast your purchases and stabilize your costs over time.

With Adoria, menu planning becomes simple and accessible on a daily basis. Our software suite helps you manage your technical data sheets, accurately assess your material costs, and also order local and seasonal produce.

Optimize your purchasing

To optimize your purchasing, here are a few tips:

• Fine-tune your negotiating techniques : Envisage volume purchases or long-term contracts to benefit from preferential rates.
  Choose a management tool that provides reliable purchasing and reporting histories. This means you're not dependent on information provided by your suppliers, giving you a solid basis for challenging them during annual negotiations.
• Optimize your assortment : Tighten up similar SKUs to streamline your assortment, which can reduce costs and simplify inventory management.
• Manage your inventory on a just-in-time basis : This technique will reduce your inventory and, consequently, your storage costs. Be careful, however, as it requires real-time inventory management and close coordination with your suppliers.

Adoria's procurement module considerably simplifies your purchasing. It centralizes the entire process, offers ordering advice and even facilitates supplier exchanges thanks to EDI. As a result, you benefit from optimized management and better control of your costs.

Efficient inventory management

Efficient inventory management is essential to controlling your production costs. Here are 3 quickly applicable best practices:

• Opt for high-performance software : A suitable tool will enable you to track your inventory in real time, manage SLEDs and anticipate your daily replenishment needs.
• Conduct regular inventories : This good practice will help you to regularly adjust your stock levels and identify any losses or human errors. Regular control will always be the key to optimal management.
• Analyze your consumption data : By studying your trends, you'll be able to adjust your purchases and thus minimize your food waste.

Adoria offers advanced features for inventory management: real-time tracking, theoretical stock visible when ordering, quick and easy inventories via a mobile app.... Everything is designed to facilitate your management and optimize your raw material inventories.

Train your teams in cost management and waste reduction

Training your teams is often a major investment in the future of your facilities.

• Implement in-house training programs : Organize workshops, seminars or online training. This will enable you to pass on best practices and engage every employee in this process of long-term enhancement of the entire value chain.
• Insist on effective techniques : Sensitize your teams to the application of recipe cards, the valorization of leftovers and food preservation methods. These skills are essential to reducing food waste.
• Evaluate the performance of your action plan : Implement a few simple indicators to measure your teams' effectiveness. This will enable you to identify your successes and promote them to your teams.

Effectively pilot your key indicators

Adoria offers particularly relevant performance monitoring tools. You can assess your teams' efficiency in real time, thanks to interactive dashboards and detailed reports.

Here are just a few examples of KPIs for assessing team efficiency and optimizing cost management in contract and commercial catering:

• Material cost per dish : This indicator measures the cost of ingredients used for each dish. It allows you to track discrepancies between theoretical and actual cost, helping to identify sources of waste.
• Order compliance rate : Tracks the percentage of orders delivered that comply with specified quantities and qualities. This indicator verifies the reliability of suppliers and the accuracy of orders placed.
• Inventory accuracy : Tracking the accuracy of inventories in relation to physical stocks. This indicator helps detect discrepancies and improve inventory processes.
• Food waste : Tracking quantities of food thrown away compared with quantities purchased. This indicator is essential for identifying sources of waste and implementing corrective actions.
• ...

Adoria's software solutions are designed to help you control costs while improving operational efficiency. Whether you're the General Manager, CFO or Operations Manager of a catering or commercial group, our platform will enable you to achieve major savings and improve your margins/YRC on a daily basis.