On my last day in Turks & Caicos Beaches Resort (which is HUGE – 23 restaurants!) I had the chance to speak with Chef Colin, AKA the Food Cost Master. If you’re having issues with your food or labor costs – this is the man you want to learn from.

His biggest tip for staying ahead of the game is to let your chefs know how much money they have to spend, give them a weekly forecast and manage it with them daily.

Chef Colin will break down the reports about a week in advance to all his restaurants and then monitor their daily spending. Each chef knows his weekly forecast and can manage how he spends that money. Maybe on a Monday he buys all his proteins, Tuesdays he orders fruits and vegetables, Thursday he stops by the pastry shop. He manages his money on a daily basis based on the occupancy in the resort, it’s fun and he buys what he needs to run the kitchen.

To give you an idea of what these chefs go through – the food cost in Beaches resort is about $50,000 – $60,000 per day. Each village has a different number of restaurants and combined with the occupancy of the resort, it makes it easier for the restaurants to know exactly what they need to purchase for the week.

The main takeaway? Set a target!

If you want or need help with all your cost projections, targets and sales, I have some software called BACON to help you do all of this. This isn’t like the complicated systems that you might see in some restaurants – this has been created just for you guys who are running a handful of restaurants.

If you want to go low tech, write down your projected sales for the month, decide what your food cost should be for the month and divide it into weekly allowances. If your food cost is $30,000 for the month, that’s about $7,200 each week. Every day subtract your invoices from that allowance. If you spend $9,000 one weekend, you’re in trouble if you don’t keep that in check the following week.