Did you adjust your sales tax rate? California wide sales tax DECREASED for the first time in many years, so make sure you adjust down .25% on your sales no matter where you are.
What’s Your Labor Goal?
For every 1 hour a minimum wage person works, you should be bringing in at least $45 of sales to ensure you meet a 25% labor goal. So, look at your average tickets per hour, and break out the calculator!
Do you have your vendors on auto pay?
Do you have your vendors on auto pay? If you don’t have an accountant watching the credits and ensuring the vendors are applying them, you could have a lot of funds out there owed to you!
Do you know what your per department costs should be?
Do you know what percentage of gross your bartenders should be at cost wise? How about your kitchen? If you aren’t aware of the numbers, you could be throwing money away by overstaffing. Your numbers tell a lot about where you are overspending. Make sure you get these numbers and start watching them, and then watch the money stay put in your bank account!
Where do you purchase restaurant supplies?
Does your kitchen staff purchase supplies for the restaurant from a major food vendor? Do you know that if you source this out through APP or IPFS or another local company you could save a significant amount of money? Shamrock and US Foods or Sysco may offer cups and lids for $2 more than a company that specializes in these products – quantity is king! Make sure your kitchen is sourcing all products through the cheapest places but still ensure your product quality is kept up – you will see the difference in your cash!
Have you budgeted for Decembers salary increase?
It’s nationwide – if you have a manager who is exempt you need to be prepared to increase their salary to a minimum of $47,476 per year. This is only for exempt workers who do not qualify for overtime under the exemption rules. If you are in California, they will get another increase in January to $47,840 due to the minimum wage increasing January 1, 2017. Make sure you plan ahead for these changes so that your payroll stays in line with where it should be.
Are you verifying your time punches daily?
Do you know that you have a better chance of saving money with payroll if you did?
If you verify your punches only at payroll time, you might not remember that Employee Joe Smith left early two Saturday’s ago, so when you go to fill in the time punch that he didn’t clock out for, you look at what he was scheduled for, and you have just overpaid Joe by the amount of time that he left early for. Employees sometimes don’t clock out on purpose, and it costs you money. Make sure you or your managers stay on top of this to avoid this.
Is your payroll as lean as it could be?
Are you wasting money weekly on payroll costs that you could be putting to your bottom line?
If your payroll is over 25% (including taxes and benefits) of gross sales (before comps) try taking 30 minutes off half the staff’s scheduled shifts – so your 8 hour people you will reduce to working 7.5 hours, etc. If your employees make on average $10.50/hr, on 40 employees this would save you $210 before taxes and benefits. That is $840 a month on just the one change.
Does your staff make every effort to get add on sales?
Do the math with me, let’s say you have an average price of $4.00 per appetizer. If your bartenders service 60 tickets a night each, and if your bartenders were able to add on one appetizer to just half of those tickets, you would generate an additional $120.00 per bartender. Let’s assume you had 5 bartenders on for the night – that would add an additional $600 per night to your sales.
Do you have your menu costed?
Do you have your menu costed? If not, you should.
Menu costing can save you up to 7% if you take time to do all the steps properly.
There are many systems out there that can help you with this, the one we prefer is Smart Systems Pro. It incorporates training cards, recipe cards and allows you to place orders on budgeted dollars.
