Portion Control

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Pizza2007,

Lol. Thanks for the sympathy. 21% is pretty remarkable. I’m
Pretty confident the industry norm for full service is 28-33 plus or minus. If i assume 3% for paper goods, we are right in there. We serve a premium product and get premium prices. Our check averafe is $23.00. However these costs reflect our groupon discount so are inflated about 2 points for the month beginning november. I’d love to hit 21.5 but would have to start microwAving totinos to get close. 🙂
 
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jimmyfloyd:
Also, do you guys use the same oz of topping for a 1-topping and a 5-topping pizza?
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We ALWAYS weigh the cheese, weigh toppings on about 75 - 80% of our pies - when we’re running behind (tickets 10 minutes old) I let the cooks “free throw” toppings until we get caught up. Been weighing toppings for about 4 - 5 months now & am seeing about $600 - $700 savings a month in food cost, also product is much more consistent.

Weight chart is laid out like a spreadsheet (actually did it on Excel). Left hand column, each row has your different pie size. The top row has all the different toppings. Intersecting boxes each have 3 weights for 1 topping, 2 or 3 toppings, & 4 or more toppings. Since a lot of toppings are the same weight, I color coded collumns that are identical. It works really well, but you have to keep on everyone’s behind for the first month or so. A big time saver is to give everyone a 1/10th of an ounce leeway one way or the other when weighing toppings. If anyone wants the chart, let me know & I’ll email it to you (you’ll need Excel to modify it for your own place, but you’d avoid a lot of the “heavy lifting”.
 
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One thing that enters into the portioning of multi-topping pies is the kind of oven you drive. Those fancy conveyors hit their one real weakness when customer wants 6 or 7 (or 12) toppings on that pie. While the impingers are phenomenal with moisture evaporation in general over decks . . . the decks are more flexible to adjusting the cook times for bigger pies.

I personally ascribe to the full measure for full price philosophy. Customer appreciate that, and I upsell lots of toppings easily. they know they get value and a ‘heavier’ pie than other places. I go up to our “Butcher Block” with 10 meat toppings and the “Train Wreck” with 20 meat/veggie toppings. We weigh them and use the same weight whether 1 or 20 toppings . . . because I have a skilled oven tender who can maneuver that heavy pie to cook it though. Equipment, pricing model, and customer demand will give all the answer you will ultimately need.
 
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We train our cooks to weigh/portion every topping on every pizza, no exceptions or excuses. I’m not an idiot, I catch my cooks cutting corners when we’re crazy busy, and I’m not in my shop open to close 7 days a week, so I’m sure I don’t see everything, BUT with my POS and daily top 5 counts, I know when the crew is really slacking off. In the past I have fired cooks who refuse to portion. With our training process now, that doesn’t happen very much. With that said our two topping pizza has 20% more ingredients than a 1 topping. 3 topping is 30% more than a 1 topping and so on. My food cost last week was 24.47. Before cheese blew up I was running 22-23%. My most expensive large specialty is 24.99, a one topping is 16.99. I discount, but you won’t find any $5 pies from me.
 
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Some kind of bonus system tied to food cost is usually incentive for most to comply…
 
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i don’t know if you use grande cheese but they have portion cups just for their cheese.

When i had my shop i had a scale on my prep table and weighed every pie. you drop it in the tray, lift it out and spread on pizza. You will be surprised at how close the hand gets to the proper weight. i found that using a preshredded grande product i used less cheese. call your grande guy, they can help.
 
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idahopizzaman said:
Hey NY…I sent you a PM with my email address…let me know if you receive it please?
Thanks
Ed
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Hello Ed. I realize this is from many moons ago, but if you happen to have that excel weight chart that NY Pizza sent you way back in 2011 I’d love to have a copy…I’d ask him directly, but it says he hasn’t been on this site since 2013. After free throwing for decades we recently bought some scales and are looking to be more consistent. Blessings.
 
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Elena said:
Hello Ed. I realize this is from many moons ago, but if you happen to have that excel weight chart that NY Pizza sent you way back in 2011 I’d love to have a copy…I’d ask him directly, but it says he hasn’t been on this site since 2013. After free throwing for decades we recently bought some scales and are looking to be more consistent. Blessings.
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I actually have his spreadsheet, let me know how to send it to you.
 
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We ALWAYS weigh the cheese, weigh toppings on about 75 - 80% of our pies - when we’re running behind (tickets 10 minutes old) I let the cooks “free throw” toppings until we get caught up. Been weighing toppings for about 4 - 5 months now & am seeing about $600 - $700 savings a month in food cost, also product is much more consistent.

Weight chart is laid out like a spreadsheet (actually did it on Excel). Left hand column, each row has your different pie size. The top row has all the different toppings. Intersecting boxes each have 3 weights for 1 topping, 2 or 3 toppings, & 4 or more toppings. Since a lot of toppings are the same weight, I color coded collumns that are identical. It works really well, but you have to keep on everyone’s behind for the first month or so. A big time saver is to give everyone a 1/10th of an ounce leeway one way or the other when weighing toppings. If anyone wants the chart, let me know & I’ll email it to you (you’ll need Excel to modify it for your own place, but you’d avoid a lot of the “heavy lifting”.
Click to expand...
please send me a copy of your spreadsheet?
 
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When we had our annual pizza seminar at AIB Big Dave was a regular speaker for many years and one of his topics was portion control. When it came to cheese, he always said that portion control could save between $300.00 and $400.00 per month. Reason enough!
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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