Chapter 160: Tips for Running a Restaurant (Part 2)
For example, if a restaurant has 50 dishes on its menu that use 101 ingredients, then theoretically, the restaurant has to prepare all 101 ingredients every day. Even if no one orders them, they still have to prepare two or three servings in case there are customers with discerning tastes.
If a restaurant only offers five signature dishes and seven or eight side dishes, and then focuses on a few ingredients, it can reduce the number of ingredients to under 20. Each dish may seem rich in content, but in fact, there are many recurring ingredients, which makes preparation very easy.
Compared with the former, the latter has sufficient advantages in saving costs, labor and time.
Of course, too much repetition in ingredients can also make dishes taste the same, which can leave guests with a bad impression. After all, if the ingredients are always chicken, carrots, and potatoes, even if they are braised, stir-fried, and served in curry, it will still feel too monotonous to guests: "I spent all this money, and in the end, all I get is the same old chicken, carrots, and potatoes?!"
Therefore, this business model is particularly common in small shops that provide convenient and fast meals. One main dish, two or three side dishes, plus soup and rice are enough to fill the diners' stomachs, and they can also ensure profitability while keeping prices low.
However, the nobles who went to high-end restaurants in this era were willing to spend a lot of money on all kinds of novel and delicious dishes. They preferred to eat a variety of dishes rather than being full of one dish.
Therefore, the right approach for a fine-dining restaurant is to guide guests toward specific choices through combo sets, recommended signature dishes, and discounted items. While repeated side dish combinations will never appear twice in a set menu, because all guests prioritize set menus, ingredient utilization rates can reach over 90%.
Especially for a place like Mengyuan Restaurant, which is difficult to make a reservation, most guests will not eat there twice in a short period of time. It is most cost-effective to choose the set meal recommended by the restaurant and taste all the signature dishes.
At Jiangyou's suggestion, Dream Garden Restaurant chose this business model. Each day, the chefs simply prepare the ingredients for the recommended combo set menu, plus a small amount for other dishes on the menu. Any leftovers can be used as staff meals.
The reason why Mengyuan Restaurant has such high profits is not only because of the influx of customers, but also because it uses the business tips provided by Jiangyou and saves a lot of costs.
However, this business trick is not suitable for chefs who prepare custom banquets for nobles.
At first, the nobles would be happy to eat the set meal a few times, but as the number of hired chefs came to their house increased, they would get tired of it. After all, these nobles were not allowed to reuse their clothes for another banquet, so how could they agree to the same dishes being served repeatedly?
The first time they felt it was novel, the second time they felt it was still delicious, but the third time, no matter what the chefs said, the nobles would feel bored, or even think it a little ridiculous - is it possible that these chefs only know how to make these few dishes?
Therefore, in order to avoid this situation, after foreseeing the occurrence of this problem, Heidi asked the banquet team to temporarily stop accepting orders from old customers, and she came to Jiangyou for subsequent cooperation with fruitful "results".
"You need brand new banquet dishes." Takumi chuckled. "And because it's a custom banquet, we can have the nobles confirm it in advance, and then prepare the ingredients specifically based on the number of guests and their preferences. It's not like running a restaurant, where you have to wait for completely unknown guests to arrive, so you don't have to worry about wasting food."
Heidi's eyes lit up: "That's right!"
"It would be best to prepare three sets of banquet menus, some of which can be changed according to the nobles' preferences, so as to create more variety. This set of menus will need to be changed after a month or two... Well, why not just make seasonal dishes that suit the occasion? Once the season is over, it will be a good time to change it up."
The ancients had a long-standing custom of eating specific dishes according to the seasons and solar terms. Part of the reason for this was naturally that specialized ingredients were only available during these times. When these ingredients were in abundance, they were not only cheaper but also of higher quality—for example, fruits and vegetables were ripe, fish were migrating, and animals were plump and delicious. Missing these seasonal times made it harder to obtain ingredients, and even if they were available, their quality would be significantly reduced.
Secondly, specific cooking techniques can bring pleasure to people in specific climates. For example, people prefer cold food in the summer, warm pots in the winter, light dishes in the spring, and fattening up in the autumn. This instinct to forage for food in accordance with climate and physiological needs is innate in humans and is referred to by some scholars as "elegance."
By launching a seasonal private chef menu and then promoting and packaging it using later methods, wouldn't these nobles be fascinated?
After a little thought, Jiangyou ordered three sets of "Bamboo" series meals for Heidi in the midsummer season, named "Bamboo Charm", "Bamboo Fragrance" and "Bamboo Meaning" respectively, and the main dishes are also related to bamboo.
The bamboo tube wolfberry shrimp is cooked in a bamboo tube. The broth is sweet and clear, and the shrimp are large and plump. After cooking, both the broth and the shrimp are permeated with the fragrance of bamboo...
Mushroom and sausage bamboo tube rice, diced mushrooms, carrots and sausages are stir-fried, then added with rice and water, and steamed in a bamboo tube. The fat of the sausage, the amino acid-rich taste of the mushrooms, and the fragrance of the bamboo tube are all evenly infused into the rice, it is so delicious.
Red crab bamboo tube rice, buckwheat cold noodles and sauce served in bamboo boxes and cups, and nourishing bamboo fungus and old duck soup can all be included in the menu.
However, summer is not all about bamboo. Now is the season for eating lotus roots. You can also choose to eat stir-fried lotus pond moonlight, fried lotus root boxes filled with meat, lotus root and pork ribs soup, and honey glutinous rice lotus root. Finally, a dish of nut lotus root powder as a dessert will make the nobles eat so much that they can't walk!
These dishes may require expensive ingredients (such as glutinous rice and bamboo fungus), or require the additional preparation of some time-consuming and labor-intensive essential ingredients (such as bamboo tubes, sausages, and buckwheat noodles), or require some high-quality seafood (such as prawns and red crabs). If these dishes are prepared in an everyday restaurant, it is easy for the ingredients to not match the diners' orders. Either they will be sold out quickly, or there will be a large amount of leftover stock. No matter what you do, problems are likely to occur.
But when it comes to private chef banquets, these dishes not only taste good, but can also easily create a high-end and classy feel, making them very suitable for custom-made by nobles who can afford it.
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