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Operating Standards

The Route to Restaurant Profitibility

Create Operating Standards Strategy – A strategy for operating efficiency suggests reducing operating costs through innovative thinking and planning, while maintaining or improving standards of food and service. Look at your operations to see if you are maximizing profits with your existing facilities. Examine one or more of the following:

  1. Are you operating at the lowest cost?
  2. Should you change your serving hours?
  3. Can you improve your customers’ turnover rate?
  4. Should you increase your seating space?

To remain at the top requires imaginative planning, dedication of purpose and the determination to achieve your objectives. This can be done only if you study new and better ways to satisfy the public’s yearning for the best food, greatest service, comforting ambiance and heartfelt hospitality.

Financial Operating Standards

Budgeting is the quantifying of the goals and expectations of the restaurant determined from an analysis of past performance. This data is interpreted in the context of the present situation and an educated guess is made about what will occur in the future.

GEC believes that preparing a budget is the best way to focus attention on every area of cost control and thus achieve the most efficient and profitable operation of your restaurant. Once a budget is made and reviewed, you have a definite guidepost to measure your future performance as it occurs. You don’t need to wait for weeks after the month’s end to learn from your auditor’s report what you did in the specified month. You’ll know as it happens.

The Coordinated Operating Standards Approach (COS)

By using COS Restaurant companies, both large and small, can determine how to get to their ultimate destination. Once they know where they are starting from, their present position and where they want to go, the route becomes more visible. GEC understands COS.’s value to the restaurant industry and how to apply it.

Management’s Role in Controlling Standards – In this Industry, control is a process that enables an executive to seek results which come as closely as possible to the objective. Such control consists of directing, disciplining and supervising people to get them to reach desired standards of performance immediately or in the long term. Other standards to set may deal with time keeping, menu implementation, service procedures, and profit levels.

There can be no better use of managements’ skills than in providing impetuous, support, and encouragement to keeping their restaurant successful. Control also seeks to minimize any errors and to prevent discrepancies from arising between the plan and the results. Finally, control must by it’s very nature be continuous. There can be no periods of omission or failure in maintaining adequate lines of control. Managers must be experienced or trained to exercise good control of standards and be able to gauge results.

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Here is what one of our clients wrote to us:

"Gordon Thank you for explaining this all to us. It's appropriate in the waning years of the 90's that our industry recognizes that in its own self interest, C.O.S. is the system of choice to move forward into the 21st century. C.O.S. is the choice for controlling input of labor and foodstuffs, beverages and operating costs. This methodology can expand our abilities to increase output so prices can remain competitive.

"These effects will surely be satisfying to our growing sophisticated customer base."

R. M., President, McSweeny’s Pubs

For additional detailed information on restaurant consulting services see our "Service Modules" page.