Struggling to control your restaurant’s F&B expenses? Restaurateur Sanjeev Nanda shares top tips

Running a restaurant business comes with its own set of challenges. One of the tricky issues that restaurant owners often find themselves facing is controlling their expenditure, especially when it comes to food and beverages. What seems like an unachievable target is, however, something that is easy to accomplish. All one requires is the right planning. We asked Dubai-based restaurateur Sanjeev Nanda about ways in which restaurants can get a better hold on F&B expenses. Read on to know the top tips that he shared:

Ensuring consistency through standardization

Consistency in the recipes throughout the restaurant’s functions across branches plays a key role in reducing spending on F&B. It is important to establish a standard for each drink or food recipe and ensure that each time the dish is prepared in the exact same way with the exact same amount of ingredients. According to Sanjeev Nanda, this not only provides better control over the quantity of ingredients being used but also ensures that the customers are being served dishes that do not compromise on quality.

Weighing the profitability of recipes

Having as many delicacies on the menu as possible might seem to be a good idea, but from the business point of view, it is important to determine whether or not a certain food or drink recipe is proving to be profitable. Sanjeev Nanda, who runs multiple restaurants, suggests maintaining a database for menu items along with the quantity of ingredients they use. By calculating the cost of ingredients along with the delivery and spoilage can help you determine the profitability of a particular offering on the menu. You can add or remove items from the menu accordingly.

Better control over inventory

Putting a well-rounded system for managing inventory in place is undoubtedly the best way to take charge of your restaurant’s F&B expenditure. According to Sanjeev Nanda, being on top of the ingredients and their quantity stored in the warehouse is extremely important since it not only helps you avoid wastage but also helps you determine the budget to be allocated for ingredient purchases. Staying well within the budget and choosing materials with longer shelf life while placing orders, along with conducting a thorough check of inventory at regular intervals can help you avoid understocking as well as overstocking, thus saving your restaurant business a considerable amount of money.