Bo Bryant "The Restaurant Giant" - Food Cost for Beginners 

Thank you for the kind words Dave! Much appreciated.

I'm glad it was helpful! Best of luck in your new restaurant.

​@@RonaldBryantthank you so much, where is your email I want to sign in for getting this material

Thank you for the feedback C Vaughan! I appreciate it. Let me know if you have any questions or other topics you'd like to see more about. Keep the culture going... "Doing it right" is the silver bullet secret to success!

Thank you Scott! I apprecaite it!

Jacob Jung I agree

You are incredibly kind. Thank you for the feedback! Working on a new project as we speak.

Thanks for the feedback Josette! Best of luck with your new venture!

Best of luck! ~ Bo

Thanks for the words of encouragement! Much appreciated.

Thank you so much for the feedback! Stay tuned, working on a new project as we speak.

Nice! Let me know how it works for you.

You are very kind! Thank you for the feedback. ~ Bo

Thanks Roy! I appreciate the feedback. More videos coming soon.

Thank you Sabar! I appreciate the feedback. Best wishes!

Thank you so much! I am happy to hear that. Keep it up!

So nice of you, thank you! ~ Bo

Thank you Crude Cheata!

Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate it. Let me know if there are any future topics you would like to see.

Thank you very much! ~ Bo

Thanks for the feedback. If there are any topics you would more info on, let me know.

Glad to hear it! Thank you for the feedback! ~ Bo

My pleasure Mimi! Thanks for watching!

You are so welcome! Thanks for the feedback! ~ Bo

That's very kind my friend! I appreciate you and I am glad that the information was helpful. Best of luck in your endeavors. ~ Bo

Thanks Ricky Bobby (great name!)

Thanks JonesJr876!

My pleasure. Thanks for the positive feedback!

Great question @WISHBONEL7. I'll do a follow up video on this subject in more depth but in the meantime, there is a relative limit to how much you can charge. This is more of a menu engineering and psychology proposition based on how consumers perceive what is called "fair market value". While certainly there are items that are creative, new or so unique that the consumer doesn't have a way to rationalize its value and you can indeed capture better food costs and sell your products for a higher price. You are also correct about mitigating factors but the basis for this video is in the title. "...for Beginners". These rules should be applied as minimum value expectations for profitability. For example, if your rent as a percentage of sales is above 7% that illustrates that you have a sales (volume) issue and that will impact profitability vs. a food cost issue. You can run the best food cost in the world but if you cannot break the sales volume to get that number at or below 7% it doesn't matter. If on the other hand your rent is well below 7% of total sales you either have above avg. traffic (which is good) or your in a your in a less desirable real estate location. Getting a cheap location usually has a lot more to do with the real estate grading. A less visible, lower traffic area is going to require a higher spend (typically) in marketing cost to let people know you are there and what is saved in your rent percentage is typically offset by a higher spend in your marketing cost. As for as food, the deeper and more intricate you go with the food itself, adding more unique items and more labor by making something very creative may indeed drive down the cost of the product or allow you to charge more but you have to consider the combinative effect of food and labor as a whole (prime cost). At the end of the day, I am hopeful that you can crack this code and if/when you do I also encourage you to share because baseline and benchmark values I have shared I this video tend to be the predictable range and while there are exception to the rule, we don't see them as often as we would like. So if you find some, share them! Great question! Keep them coming.

Glad you think so!

Pepsi and Coke typically have two different sales divisions in most markets. One is bottling which deliver bottles and cans the other is BIB system product which stands for bag in the box. This is the product used for the fountain machines and typically mix at about a 5 to 1 water to syrup ration. That product is most often found through food service distribution.

My pleasure. Thanks you so much for the positive feedback!

Sysco doesn't work on Mark-Up they work on Margin. Interesting little fact: 10% Mark Up on $100 is $10. 10% Margin on 100 is $11. Sysco is no dummy, that is for sure! That lesson notwithstanding, an independent street account is certainly subject to paying more than a chain restaurant and while some of that has to do with a sales persons discretion, there is also a lot more supply chain sophistication coming from the chains, simply meaning they know what behaviors a distributor is looking for and they offer those behaviors in exchange for better pricing, typically contracted. For example, they know that total number of drops per week and total number of cases per drop are the ultimate currency when it comes to leveraging distributor price. And they also sign contracts with distributors that contractually lock an agreed upon Margin or Mark-Up schedule so that a sales rep cannot just adjust pricing to help their commissions. Great feed back though, I really appreciate you taking the time to watch my video and leave a comment! Cheers, Bo

ROCK-N-ROLL Brother!!!

This is extremely variable, I can tell you. Small differences in the level of service can change the numbers by 5-10% easily. How much employees are earning will depend greatly on where you are located, too. Employee costs in some places dwarf rent and food costs in some places for fine dining.

I appreciate the response. However, that is like saying that it is impossible to generalize about food and labor costs. Generally, food costs should be between 28 - 30% and labor costs should be about the same. The costs can vary widely depending on how the restaurant is run. Still, people can quote these percentages as generalizations. Therefore, why can't anyone break the labor costs down between the kitchen staff, the bar staff and the wait staff. With proper accounting the good restaurants must track this information.

Because, like it or not, labor expenses encompass too many variables to be standardised. Food costs are easy by comparison. To give you an example, I am currently building a restaurant in Helsinki where the labor will account for over 50% of our overhead, with the front of the house being the majority of that burden because there are no tips here and so wait staff expects to be paid in full for their labor. The cost of labor here is high, and so is the demand for service. Many restaurants here make the stupid mistake of trying to cut back on labor, which means less table turnover. You are literally shooting yourself in the foot by trying to save money that way.

My gosh KC, this answer is so overdue. I am sorry I missed this question. If it still matters there are some benchmarking standards that we apply to labor percentage. They differ from Full-service to Quick-service and it sounds like you were asking about Full-service. As a standard we use a rule of 9-10% for management labor, 8-9% for kitchen labor (as a general rule, some states with a higher minimum wage are looking more like 9-10%), 7-8% for FOH labor with a Bar (lower without a bar by about 1%) and about 3-4% on employee benefits, leaving a benchmark low of 27% and a high of 31%. There are a number of factors like sales per square foot, menu mix, prep and food technicality, and total size of the restaurant but these are good numbers to use as a baseline. I know it is extremely late, but I hope it helps. Kind regards, Bo

Aashpreet Kaur How big is your spot going to be? (Sq. Ft) How many tables are you planning on having? What is your rent at location? You can figure out how much each sq. Ft of your restaurant will need to make. What is your average price per guest? These questions determine how much income you will need to be making to eventually turn profit after your initial investment.

Sorry for the delay. A quick rule of thumb that I use in forecasting feasibility is to use the rule of rent as 7% to sales. The fastest way to calculate this is take your rent (if known) and divide the number by 7. Then multiple that remained by 100. This will give your monthly sales needed to hit the 7% rent benchmark. If you haven't identified a space or ideal size yet you would have to figure out what you think your PPA (Per Person Average Sale) would be and then multiply that by the number of seats in your restaurant. Then ,multiply that number by 1.2 (for full service) or 2.6 (Quick Service) - based on industry median daily seat turns. That you give you a baseline forecast of what you can expect in sales. I hope that helps. I know it may sound complicated but I don't have enough info to be more specific.

Thanks for the feedback Sophie. You can get my books on Amazon. "Profit Pro Plus" is the menu engineering and food costing book or my book "On the Menu". I also have a book called "Whisper Marketing - The Restaurant Secret Formula". Sorry for the delayed response. Take care.

Hey Ammar, would love to help! I can definitely help out!

@@nigelthelegend please if you can

Is there is any way to reduce to coast of this problem I have really is big business I work in but really I can't figure out how can reduce chemical product

Sorry Phil, this was one of my first videos. They're getting better. Thank for watching. I hope it helped. ~ Bo

Wotdermatter just make sure you spell “spelt” spelled.

I appreciate the feedback. No team, just me... trying to put out useful, meaningful content for free! Sometimes my need to capture content and get it out quickly prevents me from being at thorough as I should be. I appreciate the feedback though. Kind regards, and thanks for watching! ~ Bo

Bullshit. It's the other way round! If an employee is coming to the realisation that they're having to STEAL food because they aren't being paid enough, then they should get a job that pays more! Or go get some education! Kitchen work just isn't very well paid unless you work your way up, but you know that when you apply for the job. There's no excuse for theft.

You're welcome! I hope it helps. Best of luck to you!