Menu Management Value fights increasing costs of food ingredients

Three major factors will impact on the cost of menus in 2019: rising costs of ingredients, rising costs of labour and increased prices from suppliers. Faced with this situation (Brexit uncertainties aside), how do you keep giving your customers quality and value in their food? How do you maintain a sustainable supply chain?

Normally, when the price of food ingredients rises, there are different ways to respond, like increasing dish prices, increasing transaction volumes or the number of courses. Each way has its pros and cons of course, but especially if you are committed to quality, some of these options will not be viable at all. You may lose value credentials or risk bill shocks.

In our opinion, an interesting and innovative way to combat rising prices of ingredients is “Menu Management Value”.

The idea is that by engineering menus differently, you can mitigate price pressure on certain key items, therefore combating rising costs while preserving the integrity of your dishes and offering your customers an experience which keeps them coming back for more.

There are several ways to achieve this.

Some foodservice professionals are adjusting their menus, even slightly, so that price pressure on certain key items is relieved. For example, removing them from core dishes and offering them as a bolt-on. Others are offering smaller portions of key ingredients, or standard versions, instead of more specific ones (e.g. aubergines, instead of baby aubergines). Other foodservice professionals are simplifying their upselling options and charging a standard price rather than applying individual costs.

Even the way a menu is displayed can help fight increased costs. For example, by putting prices next to the menu description in order to encourage customers to choose a dish based on the menu, rather than immediately looking at prices.

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you will know that at Foodbuy we value quality above all else and we fight for it at every stage of our supply chain with our smart procurement system. It should be no surprise then that we will be working harder than ever to tackle rising costs with menu management without compromising on quality.