What is the Salsa Packet Item in Your Operations?

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This is a picture of a pile of Mild Taco Bell Salsa packets.  These are what is left after my wife and I used a few on our tacos for dinner last night.  I know how to treat my lady.

Do you want to guess how many packets are in this pile?

47

That is 47 mild salsa packets that are now in my trash can.  I don’t know what salsa packets cost taco bell but I would guess that this represents any where from 20 to 50 cents worth of profits.

Average Guest Check at a Taco Bell is $7.00, fool.com, and average unit volume for 2014, is $1,049,000, I backed into this number using sales and unit counts from NRN and the Yum annual report.  That means an average Taco Bell serves around 150,000 guests per year.

I’ve scoured the web and there are tons of posts about people getting 20 to 40 salsa packets per order.  Let’s just assume that a salsa packet costs Taco Bell a penny and the average waste is 10 packets per order, which from my own experience is a pretty low number.

That means that the average taco bell owner is throwing away $15,000 a year in profits.  Are there ways that a Taco Bell manager could be managing to this without slowing down ticket times and through put; absolutely!

If you aren’t actively managing your operations and communicating what is important, why it is important, and then inspecting what you expect you will lose money.

I want to digress here for a second.  The analysis that I did is very basic and I was able to do it with a few internet searches.  If you read the OpsAnalitica blog, then you know that we are always talking about operations data and how important it is for restaurant managers.

That basic analysis I did above is using operations data and I found a potential loss in profits per location of $15,000 a year.

Imagine if you were capturing really great operations data every day in your restaurant, you can with a tool like OpsAnalitica.

Imagine if you were able to sit down for a couple hours per quarter and review your operations data and compare it to your costs and sales; do you think you could find even $5,000 of waste or inefficiency in your business? What is the salsa packet item in your restaurant that is costing you thousands that you aren’t managing?

Do you think it would be helpful to know the real costs of things? Of course it would. Do you know what a waiter no calling or no showing costs you in lost sales or how much revenue you lose when your cook time increases by 1 minute per ticket?

I know you will be amazed at how much this stuff costs and how the solution to most of these issues is just a small change in how you manage your restaurant.

Operations Data when merged with sales and cost data is the most potent competitive advantage that restaurant managers have because it is such a new area of operations.

Running more efficient and profitable restaurants is what you got into this business to do.

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