Reducing Overheads in a Ghost Kitchen
Ghost kitchens are designed for low costs and high efficiency. Let’s take a closer look at how you can reduce overheads in your ghost kitchen.
Menu Optimisation
The first step to reducing operating costs in your commercial kitchen is optimising your menu. As a small and simple example, if you have a menu with three fried items and one grilled item, you’ll be paying to keep a grill warm and only cooking one item on it. It’s going to be difficult for this item to cover the costs of running the grill. A real world example of this is obviously going to be much harder to identify, this is where information such as sales records will come in handy.
The two options here are then, do you sell more grilled products, or do you sell the grill? This is the thought process behind optimising your menu. It is essentially a cost/benefit analysis. Generally speaking, in a ghost kitchen setting you will want to reduce the menu and sell the excess equipment. This reduces training costs, equipment costs and will boost revenue if there’s excess equipment to sell.
Staff Overheads
Lost productivity is a silent killer; it’s hard to track, it’s expensive and can be difficult to spot, even when it’s happening right in front of you. Excess downtime can come from inefficient catering equipment. This is another one of those cost/benefit decisions; will better equipment increase your revenue by more than the cost?
Better equipment is also usually easier to use. User friendly equipment means one employee can be trained in multiple roles. This cuts right back on employee downtime during quiet periods. This also creates more tangible overhead savings, like having less staff rostered on.
Equipment Maintenance
Continuing on with equipment, maintenance is crucial to keeping productivity high. There’s the obvious like cleaning your equipment and checking it regularly, but did you know most commercial catering equipment will come with a recommended service period? If this isn’t followed you run the risk of having your equipment break down, or voiding your warranty. It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to get your equipment serviced, the long-run costs will be far cheaper this way.