Continue to Site

Where to begin...lowering food costs

I just want to make sure I’m clear on how you’re calculating these #'s.

It would simply be COGS/TOTAL SALES?

At first I was thinking that you were saying your percentage was derived from COGS/TOTAL EXPENSES. I was lost because no one mentioned that maybe you were doing an incredible job on payroll which would clearly raise your COGS:TOTAL EXPENSE ratio.

I did a quick check on mine and from my time of opening (3/29/10) to last night, I’m running at 30.67% if these numbers are calculated as goods over sales.

Clearly each situation is much different, but on avg in the pizza delco business, are there a series of #'s to strive for in other aspects, such as payroll/sales, rent/sales, etc.
 
Last edited:
Despite the higher costs of some goods over the winter months, it is still important to make sure the portions being used are consistent with your plan…
 
Last edited:
I really dont worry about food cost honestly.

As long as they are not way way out of line, We average about 32% with pepsi and Paper

Yes we could raise our prices and drop the food cost to 25% but then you are going to loose sales from the higher prices so its counter productive. Same goes for getting cheaper products, Yes they are cheaper but people notice that, so once again you run the risk of lower sales

You cannot deposit your food cost into the bank, you can only deposit your sales. You need to find what price stucture will work for you demographics to acheive the best sales. I was talking to a guy at the pizza show that was asking me what my food cost was, I told him close to 35% and he laughed at me and said his was under 25%. And this maybe true but he was only doing about 15k a month in pizza sales, i think his lacking sales were due to his higher food prices turning away customers that are a price point customer not a overall quaility customer. we run mid 30’s with food cost, including paper goods, but we do 80k+ a month in pizza because we have a good product at a great price that apeals to a wider spectrum of potential customers. We are as cheap as dominos yet have a better product than 90% of pizza places i have found

So yes you can cut corners and lower you cost of food, but you need to find the happy median that will work in your market

I promise you that everyone on here would rather have a 32% food cost and do 80K a month rather than a 25% food cost and do 15-20k a month. If we sold everything at menu price our food cost would be about 12-14%

Its just something to consider when thinking about food cost and pricing. Im not saying this the only way to do it, but it has worked well for our stores

I could not agree more about the over portions, too many toppings is worse than not enough, it costs more, it does not cook, its over powering in flavor, and it pisses people off to have more toppings than normal cause they are not used to the overkill toppings and doughy pizza

Another important thing that i tell all my empolyees, is that a properly cooked pizza is the most important part of the pizza. You can have a properly made pizza cooked poorley that will taste like crap, on the other hand you can have a pizza that is not made 100% right, that is cooked to perfection that will still taste great. People dont understand how important the actual baking of the pizza is to make it taste proper. That is why when i work i run both ovens on my own, even when we are doing 800 dollar hours
 
Last edited:
I just wanted to reiterate a portion of my last post:

“Clearly each situation is much different, but on avg in the pizza delco business, are there a series of #'s to strive for in other aspects, such as payroll/sales, rent/sales, etc.?”

And this of course being for independent owners, using high quality products (expensive cheese aka Grande), all fresh food (produce, chicken, etc.)
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the great tips. I’ve found lots of holes in our products and preparation that can be fixed. But holy Coca-Cola costs Batman!!! We charge $1.95 for a soda. I just calculated our soda cost since opening - 37%!! That’s just for the BIB’s (no cups, straws, ice, etc.) I assumed this was an area where we could make up food cost and NOT one where we were getting blasted. Even raising prices to a sustainable 2.25 wouldn’t solve this problem. What are you guys running on soda?
 
Last edited:
48.png
pcuezze:
Thanks for all the great tips. I’ve found lots of holes in our products and preparation that can be fixed. But holy Coca-Cola costs Batman!!! We charge $1.95 for a soda. I just calculated our soda cost since opening - 37%!! That’s just for the BIB’s (no cups, straws, ice, etc.) I assumed this was an area where we could make up food cost and NOT one where we were getting blasted. Even raising prices to a sustainable 2.25 wouldn’t solve this problem. What are you guys running on soda?
Click to expand...
I have a soda issue too. We make more money on foods than soda. Doesn’t seem right…

One big issue is employees. I make them bring their own cups, but I dont’ really limit what they drink. They can have the fountain all they want, and they guzzle that stuff like water. And we also only charge $1.69 for a 20 oz cup, free refills…

Maybe we need to charge a little more. We briefly tried 16 oz cups, but people made too many comments about the smaller cups since the old owner used to use 24 oz!
 
Last edited:
With fountain beverages, don’t forget to consider your CO2 costs.

We recently switched distributors and the new one brought us a pair of CO2 canisters not realizing we already rented a bulk one. The CO2 from the distributor was $1.00/lbs whereas bulk CO2 costs us only $.18 per pound. Even with the rental cost figured in (which knocks the price up to anywhere from $.50 to $.75 depending on how busy/slow we are), having a bulk CO2 tank saves us money every month.

Best of all, bulk CO2 is “fire and forget.” With a 400 lbs tank we never have to worry about employees not paying attention and serving flat pop when when the canister runs out like used to often happen with the little ones. Although, looking at last month’s bill I see we used 386 lbs and HOLY COW WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER TANK!!!
 
Last edited:
For those of you who are interested in standardizing the topping portions on all of your pizzas, Burke has a new resource available.

Our Pizza Topping Portion Wall Chart is a poster-sized version of our popular Pizza Topping Portion Guide (see preview below) for you to post over your prep tables which may assist in training your employees how to properly create your pizza. Since we know there is only one way to top your pizza, and that’s your way, we have left one side blank for you to fill in your specials and the portions which fit with your targeted food costs.

To request a poster, please fill out our Pizza Topping Portion Guide Request Form.

For more tools and resources to help manage and grow your business, check out our Tools and Resources page and our new blog, Out of the Oven.

At this time, we have a limited quantity of the Wall Charts. If the survey is closed, I apologize in advance because we have run out.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top