Reining in our food costs is not the easiest thing to do — if you do the grocery shopping for your family you’ll understand what I’m talking about. We have an extensive menu and our customers’ ordering pattern is seemingly without rhyme or reason. We guesstimate what to have on hand ready and available to cook. We’ll sometimes freeze items after portioning — raw chicken freezes well, and cooks well even when frozen, if you cook it at the right temperature. Same goes for our chili, and that allows us to make huge batches at a time. On the other end of the spectrum you’ll find our chowders and soups. We don’t freeze them. Freezing dairy (chowder) changes the consistency. Potatoes don’t freeze well either. They break up into tiny potato balls once they thaw. While we freeze uncooked chicken breasts, we don’t freeze our chicken soup. We use as many as 8 fresh veggies in each batch — and they break down when frozen. That’s just one example of how we’re committed to our high quality standards.
Right down the line we have to make daily ‘educated guesses’ as to what we are going to use that day or in the next few days. We sometimes throw out good food that’s no longer great food because it no longer meets our standards. We won’t sacrifice quality in exchange for lower food costs — that is, we won’t buy inferior products. We don’t consider compromise part of our language. I’d rather tell our customers we are out of something — even after they have ordered an item — than serve a meal where the quality has been compromised. It’s just not going to happen in our kitchen!
Thanks to the point-of-sale system we installed when we first purchased what was then known as King’s Korner, we now have over 4 years of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly customer counts. We use these numbers for scheduling, purchasing, menu planning, and daily food preparation. Sometimes we get burned by our own numbers, but for the most part the numbers allow us to keep a tight rein on food preparation and labor. Labor and Food Costs… wow… always the bottom line. Hard Choices. Our employees are also our friends, and it has been tough making the calls about who to cut and when. Though we’re doing fairly strong numbers against last year, fixed costs have risen. We’ve had to work harder, and make those tough choices when it comes to labor. We’ve been able to keep our menu prices in check, but we are constantly monitoring food costs. Our last menu update was about 3 months ago, which resulted in 3 prices falling and if I’m not mistaken, 4 prices increasing. Not too bad. Food prices fluctuate on a weekly basis… some rise drastically over the course of a month while others fall at the same pace. It’s impossible to adjust pricing weekly or even monthly, but by monitoring prices we can estimate a median range that might just balance out overall. We take hits now and then, but like the market, if you are patient things will even out over a longer period of time. Of course if food prices and energy prices keep going up at some point so will the menu prices. I guess it’s inevitable.
We’re keeping our heads up and working to give our customers that ultimate dining experience each and every time they visit King’s Corner Cafe. 
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