Читать книгу 101 Restaurant Secrets - Ross Inc. Boardman - Страница 6

If you want to keep a handle on your menu costs, then you need a master list of all your costs. Canny chefs from time immemorial have kept little black books with current food prices tucked away in their pockets. With a combination of accurate recipes for all of your menus and a full master list of costs, you are well ahead of the game. Ideally you want to be looking at a spreadsheet to do this as the next sections will be a lot more viable with one. The whole purpose of the master list is to provide you with a current single source of data on all the raw material costs you use. With this you can accurately cost your menus and keep an eye on any warning signs in the market.

The master list is a large grid with all the required data in several columns. I will assume you are going to work with a spreadsheet for now, but if not, the first column on this list could be redundant.

Column 1 - Code

Think of a basic and easy to use coding system for every ingredient you use. Keep it as simple and obvious as possible. Something like RIBEYE or ROSEMA, may be a damn sight more usable than MBSR or VHRO (Meat Beef Steak Ribeye or Vegetable Salad Rosemary). Take some time to think on how you want this to work for you. A good coding system reduces duplication and assists in searching.

Column 2 - Description

What is the ingredient, that’s all. Give it a meaningful description so that it is unique but not too specific to confuse you.

Column 3 - Unit of measure

How is it measured in buying? Think litres, pints, kilogrammes, pounds or per item. You can shop round through these units and translate them into recipe measures by experiment. You don’t buy flour by the teaspoon but you measure it that way for recipes.

Column 4 - Cost per unit purchase

How much does the whole bag or box cost if not sold loose?

Column 5 - Purchase unit

Was that flour in a 56lb or 2lb bag?

Column 6 - Cost per unit of measure

Column 4 divided by column 5

Column 7 - Supplier

Who did you buy it from?

Column 8 - Contact details

Who do you deal with and how do you get hold of them?

Column 9 - Rank

How do you rank this data if you have duplicate lines? Do you prefer a line for price or from a certain supplier or in a certain unit of purchase. The object of this is to filter out your preferred source for that combination of cost/supplier/volume for each ingredient. Your preferred source is going to be the basis for your recipe costing, all the others are back ups.

Column 10 - Date

When did you last review the cost?

Now this may look daunting as you stare around the kitchen at all the ingredients, but you only have to start the master list from current recipes and then evolve it.