What % of your cost of pizza ingredients goes to waste at an efficient pizzeria?

[ssg263]

And I’m talking just pizza and toppings, not other stuff like subs, pasta and chicken parm.

 

[jokergerm]

i see that being hard to track

 

[d9phoenix]

Depends on the pizza maker really. When i open to close the store on a $1500 day, i might have 8 oz of combined cheese/food on the floor from falling off the pizza between the makeline and oven, and what just falls off the makeline while making the pizza. I also pick my catch trays before throwing out anything unuseable. So maybe another 8 oz from the catch trays all day.

Now certain employee’s i have, could put that much food on the floor in 2 hours barely doing $400 in sales.

On the whole tho, my food is generally within 1% of ideal every day (we generally run negative 0.5%). If you have a POS just use your ideal vs actual useage as long as you know the counts are accurate. But if your working in the store every day, just step back and watch everyone work on the makeline.

It is amazing to see people not aware of how much food they throw on the floor because of sloppiness.

 

[ssg263]

Depends on the pizza maker really. When i open to close the store on a $1500 day, i might have 8 oz of combined cheese/food on the floor from falling off the pizza between the makeline and oven, and what just falls off the makeline while making the pizza. I also pick my catch trays before throwing out anything unuseable. So maybe another 8 oz from the catch trays all day.

Now certain employee’s i have, could put that much food on the floor in 2 hours barely doing $400 in sales.

On the whole tho, my food is generally within 1% of ideal every day (we generally run negative 0.5%). If you have a POS just use your ideal vs actual useage as long as you know the counts are accurate. But if your working in the store every day, just step back and watch everyone work on the makeline.

It is amazing to see people not aware of how much food they throw on the floor because of sloppiness.

Interesting, thanks for the reply.
Out of curiosity, how long does the cheese you buy stay good and do you ever run into spoilage losses with cheese or tomato sauce?

 

[pizzapiratespp]

We set our budget at .5% of sales. Which can be quite a bit when you convert it to $$. This would include spilled toppings, mis makes/re-do’s, customers peering over the counter asking for extra stuff or writing “put double everything on my pizza” on the internet order. It will also include spoilage due to over ordering or improper rotation. That’s the one that gets under my skin.

 

[d9phoenix]

Out of curiosity, how long does the cheese you buy stay good and do you ever run into spoilage losses with cheese or tomato sauce?

The cheese we buy is good for 90 days i believe, we usually get it at around 30 days. So we have not any problems there.

As for spoilage, veggies can be a problem during certain times of the year. I just inspect it on delivery and i will refuse it if it will not last 3 days. Roma guarantees most veggies for 5 days after delivery, so i can send stuff back if it does go bad. Tomato Sauce we make up and only prep 2 days worth up at a time. Keep it in cans until it is needed, never run into a problem with that.

 

[AnnieK]

We went Open Book management last year, and waste was one of the numbers we tracked (and still track) using a waste sheet on a clipboard located prominently in the kitchen. While there was some variance throughout the year, I was surprised how consistent our waste numbers ended up being after 52 weeks of tallying. We averaged 1.5-2% waste based on total food sales. This included burnt pizzas or other remakes, spoilage and dropped toppings, etc. about anything we had to throw away. This also included slices left over at the end of the night that were tossed. On a great note, getting your staff rallied around tracking this number does indeed help to eliminate a certain amount of ignorance about what waste truly costs your business. It’s a worthwhile undertaking to track.