Short multi-speaker transcript from a restaurant conversation about achieving very low food costs through waste-minimizing kitchen practices. Speaker B reports a current food cost of 12.5%, attributes pressure to inflation/overhead, and describes reusing dry-aged steak trim (Bolognese, meatballs, burgers) and premium pricing to keep costs low.
12.5%
Tell them what your food cost is.
It is running a little high at the moment. Basically inflation overhead is nuts. So we're running at 12.5%.
12.5, yeah.
12.5, yeah. That's what we're doing.
People are going to say on this call, they're going to say, they're going to say, no one can ever run that low. How do you achieve that level?
We, we have this learning culture in our kitchen. We've always had it that nothing goes in the bin without actually really looking at it and go, what can we do with that? So we're a steak restaurant. We have our own dry aged, cool room. We break down sides of beef. That beef has trim and so that trim gets turned into a Bolognese, it gets turned into a meatball, it gets turned into a burger. You know, it's all dry aged, which means it's high end, which means I can get a little bit more money for it, premium money.
For it. Right, right.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
