A short conversational clip from Donald Burns' YouTube video about food costing. The speakers describe how food costing often shocks restaurant owners—breaking egos—and triggers stages of emotional response (shock, depression, denial). They emphasize that food costing is purely data that exposes portion control, waste, theft, and inconsistent prep. Practical small changes can reduce food cost by about 10–15%, and completing an inventory-based food costing can be labor-intensive, taking one to two months.
Questions this video answers
10–15%.
One to two months.
People don't really know, but again, it's not their fault because there's no, there's no school for restaurant owners. And then we kind of shatter their world and we start getting into food costing.
Yeah.
You know, especially when they start having.
Some reality like the first time they actually do their food cost and they actually really see how much they're losing at first.
I mean, I hate to tell you.
It'S almost like depressing. It's like they have like this kind of like shock and then they go into this little depressive kind of state for like a week or two because they're just like shocked how bad. And then it's like of course then you go into denial and then you start self talk and beating yourself up. I'm so, so stupid. I can't believe I just.
Yeah, there's no ego in food costing. It's just data. Yeah. So there's no lies. It's all data. There's no ego, there's no nothing. This is where we see like portion control and waste and theft prep, like inconsistent prep. So this is, this is where everything's exposed. You can't, you can't lie about it, can't hide, you can't.
The data doesn't lie.
I'm actually working on this with a client right now and you know, redoing their main, just a little bit, little tweaks bring down the food cost, you know, sometimes 10%, 15%, like easy stuff that people aren't even aware of. That's a, that's the biggest resistant point. Food costing inventory because it's the hardest, it's the most labor intensive. It could take one or two months.
