Operational Excellence

The day-to-day foodservice operations for care settings and communities providing meals can make or break a budget. Success demands excellence in procurement, production, meal delivery, and more. The key to doing it right is having the right process in place. Two major factors impacting food costs are inventory and forecasting. Here are some ideas to include in your daily operations to assure your actions don’t extend your budget. 

Manage Inventory

The line between overstocking and understocking in any foodservice operation is thin. It requires paying close attention to detail and that is achieved by creating order lists, establishing par levels, and performing routine inventory checks. Bottomline: Overstocking is going to result in waste and negatively affect cash flow; understocking will certainly cause employee stress and undoubtedly result in disappointed guests.

Get Ahead of It

It’s best to forecast production. You want to have a good idea of your production so you can limit unnecessary expenses, avoid misuse of labor hours and reduce food waste. 

Limit unnecessary expenses with accurate production counts and recipes.

Here is some advice: 

• Determine needed food portions. Use your census and production sheets to calculate accurate amounts of food to prepare.
• Use scaled recipes. Use standardized recipes that are scaled to yield the right amount needed for service.

Save valuable time, and improve accuracy in inventory and forecasting by making good use of available technology tools.  Gordon Food Service® has a number of solutions to tap into for efficiency and accuracy. The following tools integrate with your ordering system: 

• Gordon Cycle Menu Management™: An easy and economical tool to help control food and labor costs, get nutrition analysis, standardize quality, and streamline production in your foodservice operation.
• Gordon Culinary Pro™: This tool allows chefs and culinary team members to create and organize their recipes efficiently and train staff quickly.
• Gordon Inventory™: Reduce inventory problems and give customers better insight into their total food cost.

Ask your Gordon Food Service sales representative for more information about those tools. 

Ultimately, managing and monitoring inventory reduces waste and improves cash flow, and accurately predicting production needs and scaling recipes saves money.  Purchase and prepare the right amounts and bring in the savings you need.