Good restaurants provide a consistent dining experience. The quality, quantity and presentation of food plays a major role in a customer’s experience. Too often guests are disappointed by a meal they have tried previous that does not meet their expectations. Here’s 10 ways you can control the consistency of the food you produce: Ingredients –… Read More »
How many food operations don’t know their recipes cost? I have heard estimates of 80%-90% of food service operations don’t. In an industry with a high failure rate, this seems incomprehensible. Food cost is one of our biggest controllable costs and understanding the expected cost of recipes is fundamental to managing and planning in a… Read More »
Today Count-n-Control announced the release of version 0.2 of the Count-n-Control online food inventory management solution. This release included the following enhancements: Usability improvements, making the site faster and easier to use. New “Process Transaction” component, for faster invoice entry. Performance optimization, to speed up the user experience. Minor bug fixes and enhancements. Count-n-Control has… Read More »
Most managers in the food service industry work their way up from hands-on operational roles. In the progression from operational to managerial roles a manager must learn to let-go of day-to-day operations in order to be more effective. This is often a painful transition. A friend recently started a new role as manager of a… Read More »
If you are in the family restaurant segment your children’s offering can make a difference. Here are 10 ways to position your business to better cater for children: 1. Serve everything with a side of Tomato Ketchup. This will save you many trips back to the kitchen. 2. Arm your front of house team. Teach your… Read More »
This Food Cost Control Blog post has an interesting perspective on using a nominal cost in recipes to account for Complimentary Items (e.g. bread rolls etc…) I like to create a setup recipe which may be used over and over in every entree selection. My Q factor includes all complimentary items (rolls, butter, ketchup, mustard, soy… Read More »
Many kitchens rely heavily on one or two individuals to keep the wheels turning. If one of these individuals get hit by the proverbial bus, your business could be in real trouble. Here are some ways to reduce your Key Person Dependency: Plan B, Be aware of your reliance on Key Persons and have a backup… Read More »
Count-n-Control was recently reviewed on the Back Burner Blog. Greg McGuire blogs about the foodservice industry at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and food service supplies. Here’s what they had to say: “Count-n-Control is the brainchild of long-time industry pro Paul Clarke,… Read More »
Stock Rotation protects your investment. Food Poisoning incidents can ruin the reputation of your establishment. Here’s 5 ways to promote stock rotation: FIFO (First In, First Out). This is a foundation rule of stock rotation: Use oldest items first. Put newly received goods to the back of the store to promote FIFO. Record the receipt-date… Read More »
For the past serveral months I have been working on an online food stock control system named Count-n-Control (CnC). CnC is based on a simple client based system that I developed 10 years ago, and has been used in over 50 food operations. It is only in recent times that web technology has progressed to… Read More »