You have a business partner who takes 30 percent of every sale, never washes a dish, and owns your customer list. It's the delivery app on your phone right now. In this episode: the real math on a single delivery order, and three moves that put the margin and the customer back in your hands.

What you'll learn:

• The real math on one delivery order: commission, packaging, remakes
• Why a dish priced for 30 percent food cost can lose money on the apps
• Why you should price delivery 15 to 20 percent above dine-in (everyone does, and the apps allow it)
• The flyer-in-the-bag move that turns app customers into customers you own

What did you pay for chicken last week? Not roughly. Exactly. If you don't know, your supplier does, and the number has been creeping up while you weren't looking. In this episode: how quiet price creep eats a year of profit, and the 15-minute-a-week habit that stops it.

What you'll learn:

• Why nobody calls you when your case price goes up, and what that costs across 200 items and 52 weeks
• Why the price sheet is a starting offer, not a fixed price
• The 10-item price sheet that takes 15 minutes a week
• The twice-a-year second-supplier quote that keeps everyone honest without switching

Chapters:
0:00 What did you pay for chicken?
0:10 Straight talk: the quiet creep
1:30 The Fix: the 10-item sheet
2:20 Your assignment

Free 20-question restaurant checkup: [HEALTH CHECK LINK]
The Silver Spoon Health Check takes 10 minutes and tells you exactly where your restaurant is leaking money.

Silver Spoon Daily is two minutes of straight talk for restaurant owners, every day. I'm Al Kanbar, restaurant coach and consultant.
Questions or want to work together: al@silverspoonmia.com

#restaurantbusiness #restaurantowner #foodcost #restaurantmanagement #smallbusiness

If you built this week’s schedule by copying last week and moving a couple names around, your labor cost isn’t a number. It’s a vibe. In this episode: why the schedule is the second biggest financial decision you make every week, and the forecast-first method that puts you back in control of it.

Your Google Business Profile is your real front door, and most owners haven't touched it in years. Al covers the three fixes that cost nothing and pay off immediately: hours that are actually right (especially holidays), photos taken this week instead of 2021, and how to reply to reviews. Plus the secret about answering bad reviews: you're not writing to the angry customer, you're writing to the hundred strangers reading your reply. Twenty minutes of work, the highest-return marketing you'll do all month.

Free download: the Silver Spoon Restaurant Health Check.

The best restaurants in the world share one habit. It costs nothing, takes ten minutes, and most independents skip it every day: the pre-shift meeting. In this episode, Al breaks down what happens when you skip it (servers finding out about 86'd items from angry tables, specials nobody sells, the same mistake repeating all week) and gives you the exact ten-minute agenda: the numbers, the menu, one service focus, and a taste of one dish. Run it tonight.

Free download: the Silver Spoon Restaurant Health Check, 20 questions that show you where your restaurant is leaking money.

You hired someone new, pointed at your best server and said "just follow Maria." That's not training, that's gambling. In this episode, Al explains why people don't quit hard work, they quit chaos, and what every lost hire really costs you. Then he lays out the five-day first-week plan that turns new hires into keepers: the tour and menu tasting, station checklists, the reverse shadow, and the fifteen-minute check-in. Write it once, use it forever.

Could you turn your phone off for three days and come back to a restaurant that's still standing? If not, you own a job, not a business. Al walks through the first systems that buy your life back: opening and closing checklists your team actually signs, documented recipes any trained cook can execute, and the one-day-off test that shows you what to fix next.

Free download: the Silver Spoon Restaurant Health Check.

The bigger your menu, the more waste, the more inventory, the slower your kitchen, and the thinner your margins. In this episode: how to pull your product mix report, find the dead dishes that are costing you money, and give your stars the menu real estate they deserve. Your guests don't remember big menus. They remember signature dishes.

Free download: the Silver Spoon Restaurant Health Check.