Financing
How your restaurant sales and profits compare to competitors' and what you can do to improve financial performance
Financing
The Mediterranean menu
What to look for when purchasing olives and olive oil—two Mediterranean staples.
Financing
Minding food safety in your produce purchase
With health and freshness two of the major forces driving menus today, produce is top on operators’ purchase orders. Indeed, restaurants have been making a big effort to put more fruits and vegetables on the plate. But this effort hit a roadblock with recent E.coli scares and salmonella outbreaks. As a result, food safety has become the priority for suppliers and buyers of fresh produce.
Operators and their customers who love meat are starting to fork over more money to put protein on the plate. The problem starts with the feed. Cattle are traditionally finished on grain, but farmers looking for larger profits are now growing corn for ethanol instead of animal feed. Cow/calf producers are currently bearing the brunt of higher feed prices.
Restaurants traditionally rely on chicken and turkey to be menu profit makers. Usually in good supply and always a good buy in relation to other proteins, operators often turn to poultry to keep costs in check when red meats and seafood skyrocket. But that strategy may be dampened in the months ahead.