The ability to accurately forecast sales and expenses is a necessary skill that a manager or owner should possess. In this chapter, we'll look at ways to help you be more competent in forecasting your sales and spending. Having the right amount of inventory in your restaurant is difficult to master. If you buy too little, your restaurant will not be able to serve customers properly, while buying more will result in a waste of materials and money.
As expected, food inventory is one of the most wasted materials in restaurants. Forecasting helps optimize restaurant inventory management by providing information on the menu items that are most popular. In addition, the frequency with which they are ordered so that restaurant owners and managers can store the right amount of inventory as predicted. This reduces the likelihood that the restaurant will run out of ingredients and also reduces waste and saves costs, which in turn increases profitability in the long term.
You can improve the level of accuracy of your forecasts over time by correctly comparing the estimated sales forecast with actual sales, identifying any discrepancies and taking them into account for your next forecast. The FoodPro forecast module uses historical data (refined according to demographic adjustments and analysis of recent trends) to generate a model for forecasting the number of customers that will need to be served in the future. Whether it's to predict income, expenses, the amount of food and beverages that will be needed, or the scheduled working hours. Beth Egan's Introduction to Food Production and Service is licensed under an international Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, except where otherwise noted.
If the forecast of the total number of customers for a given day is set to 1200, the percentage of each main course applies to this total forecast (see the column on the right of the graph above). Other initiatives that may affect forecasts include the improvement of the quality of service, the renovation of facilities or “green” initiatives, such as a more sustainable supply, the use of compostable supplies, etc. Many operations use a concept called the “popularity index” to help predict the quantity of each item on the menu that should be produced, taking into account a general forecast of the number of customers. The customer forecast then uses the popularity statistics of the menu items to generate a forecast of the portions of the menu that details the number of servings of each item served at each meal.
Segments of education, such as elementary and secondary schools and the food service operations of colleges and universities, must analyze school enrollment, the academic calendar, current participation rates, and even the exact menu offering of the day could change the food forecast.
