Lavar Arrington's Restaurant Goes Bankrupt

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by mredskins

I was speaking in turning a profit but yes those are major headaches as well. You basically want to run with a 30% food cost, this is very hard to do when folks are stealing from you (how many business can their products be stolen by swallowing them? ), mistakes, spoilage, etc...

Ever wonder why there are so many Pizza places? It is probaly the easiet restaurant model to run. A pizza cost like a $1 to make and they charge like what $13 for a large. As long as you keep a close eye on your cheese it would be hard to fail becuse of food cost, so much built in profit.

I actually own a pizza restaurant as a side business. The food costs still run 26-28% (we do subs, pasta too). The cheese is the hardest to track and most expensive (although cheese costs are actually down over the last 6 months). Getting the cooks to consistently measure the cheese is difficult.

The actual labor costs when you figure taxes etc. runs about the same percentage as food. Making sure the employees are being productive even in slow hours is hard to do. Then you have drivers who like to stop by their buddies place between deliveries, frequent "smoke breaks", waitresses who like to talk all shift, etc. The fun never ends.

At the end of the day, even in the weakened economy we're keeping our heads above water, so we're very thankful.