I would say that letting them share in some of your savings would be the best way to get them to work on food cost. You could have a base hourly rate and then if they reach a certain food cost percentage then you give them a bonus rate per hour as well. This way if the savings are not there, the extra pay is not there as well. This really hits home and they see the impact of their actions every payday. You should be portion controling very carefully as well, and maybe using a software program like food cost pro. Another thing that works is to issue a lexan tub to each employee for the shift. They then throw all their waste food into this for the day so they see how much is wasted from prep and mistakes. They will start to try and have as little as possible in that box each day. Cutting labor is harder because they want to raise your labor costs! You could have set a labor cost percentage for your manager to meet, and if he does he gets a bounus as well. Another option is to increase productivity in your best employees. You can tell them that if they can step it up in order to do just fine with one less employee on the shift that you can give them a raise for working harder, and you still get to save say at least half of that cut employees hourly wage.
