Become Your Restaurant's Official Trash Picker - A Cost Cutter Tip For Restaurants

A customer would like some extra salsa for his burrito. The server diligently goes to the kitchen and returns with a "monkey dish" (51/4 oz.) side of salsa. If you have stationed yourself as a trash picker for the day, you will see half of the salsa come back ready to be thrown away. This process is repeated consistently throughout the day with mayonnaise, sauces, butter, pickles and a dozen other customer requests.

The waste is common and easily cured. If the server were trained to use a 2 ounce ramekin instead of the bowl twice that size, think how much you would have added to your bottom line in one day. Don't forget about the labor it takes to prepare the various condiments. The refrigeration space for the discarded extra products and energy for storage and equipment used.

According to a highly regarded hospitality website, restaurants have a waste factor of 2 to 4 percent of unneeded or unwanted food and condiments regularly returned on plates. That is expressed as a percentage of total food costs. These are real dollars coming directly off your bottom line, not some hypothetical dependent theory.

I know of one restaurant operator that wanted to make an impression on servers during a meeting. He spread out a large plastic drop cloth and dumped a couple of bulging trash bags of garbage in the middle. Besides the silverware, cocktail forks and smallwares, there was an amazing array of food that pointed to portioning problems and wasted condiments. Packets of ketchup, bundles of unused napkins, moist towelettes, excess sides, tons of french fries not eaten, sandwich garnishes and much more. In a busy rush hour waste seems to lose its importance and sloppy procedures become the norm.

To implement cost controls for waste, here are a few steps your restaurant needs to consider;

• Identify problems by literally monitoring trash and garbage.
• Get portion cups or ramekins to serve guests additional requested items. You may want to charge for some of the extras.
• Stop some of the silverware loss by using magnetic trash lids for containers where plates are scraped.
• Train servers to judiciously accommodate customers with proper amounts of paper and dry goods. Taking a dozen napkins to one customer who requested more is wasteful (the customer will recognize your waste also).
• Carefully screen your prep and expo line for poor habits.The chains are masters at portioning. An hour or so at a McDonalds watching their methods may give you some ideas.

While there is no compromise for exceptional customer service and accommodating their wishes, you will find diners don't appreciate wasteful habits. They know in the long term, guests ultimately foot the bill if the restaurant is to stay open...

As a restaurant owner or manager, you do many jobs. Add trash picking about once a month to your growing list of duties. You can be surprised at what you will find and the impact on your bottom line will be noticeable.

Larry Edger is the author of The Restaurant Ebook. Complete details on the subjects above are available at http://www.therestaurantebook.com along with many more resources for restaurant owners. Some of the material quoted here came from the website Restaurant in the Weeds.