Not by buying cheaper ingredients. That is the reflex and it is usually the wrong lever — it lowers quality, which lowers sales, which lowers everything.
Four things that work, in order of impact.
- Fix portions first. A cook who is 15% heavy on fries, on 900 plates a month at 55 cents a portion, costs you about $74 a month on one side dish. Across a menu, over-portioning routinely costs more than any supplier price increase. The fix is scoops, scales and written specs — not a conversation about being careful. It is a systems problem, not a people problem.
- Re-cost anything that has moved 10% or more. Most kitchens cost their menu once, at opening, and never again. Suppliers raise prices quietly, two percent at a time, and nobody notices until the year is over.
- Log your waste for two weeks. Not forever — two weeks. Write down what went in the bin, what it cost and why. A pattern always appears, and it usually points at one or two fixable things: over-prepping a slow item, a fridge running warm, a dish nobody orders late.
- Then look at the menu. Once portions, prices and waste are honest, sort your dishes by margin and popularity. Feature the high-margin popular ones. Retire the low-margin slow ones. The high-margin slow ones do not need changing — they need your servers to mention them.
Start with your five best sellers. They are usually half of everything that leaves the kitchen.