Prepping for service can be chaotic, and sometimes things get missed. We’ve provided 4 tips to help you prep in the best way possible, and to ensure that your margins are maximized instead of eaten.

1. Clean Prep Surfaces

A dirty prep surface can lead to product being spoiled and needing to be thrown out. Remember to clean your surface between preparing ingredients to avoid cross-contamination, as food wastage reductions can lead to a large change in your margin in a positive way.

2. Establish Portion Standards

By establishing portion standards, those doing the prep work are able to follow a guide and efficiently prepare portions on a consistent basis. This allows customers to anticipate the portion sizes in advance, and allows the kitchen to keep margins tight by not providing too much product.

3. Date and Label EVERYTHING

By dating and labeling all ingredients and preps, you will know exactly what you have, and when it was prepared. This is of great importance as you not only want to reduce the level of waste by minimizing expired product, but you also want to ensure that you’re serving the best possible product in line with your food costing method.

4. Have Defined Recipes and Prep Instructions

Operating without a plan of action or a defined set of guidelines does not work anymore. In order to prep properly and ensure your margins are maintained, having well defined recipes and preparation instructions are a must. Similar to portioning guidelines, they allow you to have a guide for staff to follow and it allows guests to enjoy a consistent experience from visit to visit.

While each restaurant may have their own ways of doing things, and tweaks to the system, these are a few methods we identified as being essential to allowing prep to make your margins larger instead of smaller.