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Food prices continue to rise as supply and demand challenges persist throughout the supply chain.
These days, food costs are one of a restaurants’ biggest concerns. Operators are scrambling to pivot to profits and are challenged with offsetting high food costs without effecting the quality of their menu.
Let’s look at how having access to up-to-date commodity insights can improve your purchasing and your bottom line.
Menu Promotions Can Be Impacted
Foodservice operators often schedule promotions months in advance to prepare for the marketing and training component as part of a produce promotion or new menu rollout. Those plans are often made before the vegetables or fruit that are needed for the promotion are even planted.
Weather conditions also play a huge role in the planning of a new promotion. For example, the fruit on a tree may suffer a devastating freeze between the time of the initial planning and the new menu rollout.
The last thing a restaurant wants to do is put up a sign saying, “Out of Stock.” Up-to-date commodity insights can help operators prepare for and potentially even modify a promotion due to changing market and weather conditions that could unintentionally have a financial hit.
Fresh Concepts Can Help
In the world of produce, knowledge is power. Having up-to-date commodity insights can be highly beneficial to cost savings and can help avoid possible shortages.
When Food Service Operators have up-to-date, relevant updates for the commodities they’re buying, they have the ability to pivot their buying to account for changes in the Market.
Let’s take tomato purchases for example. Often, there are times when the Tomato Market might experience a shortage on Rounds, but not on Romas. If a foodservice operator has been purchasing Round Tomatoes but receives a commodity update about Round Markets being escalated, they may be able to update their buying from a Round to a Roma. Having the ability to make quick changes like this can potentially save an operator money. Not only can they save on the actual case cost of the product, but this information can help prevent things such as product shortages, second deliveries, and quality issues – all of which could very well affect the bottom line.
This same method applies to other shortages as well. For example, it can be used for specific sizes for purchases of products such as Citrus or Avocados. The Food Service Operator can switch over to a smaller or medium size SKU if larger sizes are running tight. This then saves them money and increases efficiencies.
If your operation is interested in learning more about transparency into commodity information and price trends, look no further. From Controlled Pricing to Real-Time Visibility, Fresh Concepts has the solution to all your needs.
Schedule a free consultation today with our Produce Experts!
