How to Improve Your Food Margins

In my daily work, I raised our food margin from 66% (April 2025) to 74% (April 2026) in just one year. I focused on two key pillars:

1. Strategic Planning

Design your menus economically. In a lunch-voucher priced buffet, you simply cannot regularly use main ingredients costing over €10/kg, especially if your clientele has larger appetites.
Cut the clutter and focus on what matters. If the time and effort you put in isn’t noticeable to the customer, feel free to drop it.
Streamline your menu planning. For example, if you feature pork in consecutive weeks, you don’t need pork tenderloin one week, neck the next, and belly the third. Varying sauces and side dishes provide plenty of variety. This also gives you stronger leverage when negotiating ingredient prices, reduces remaining “dead stock” (leftover tails), and keeps your inventory under control.
Offer variety through side dishes. Always offer at least two different cost-effective sides. For instance, we always serve rice alongside another rotating side dish. If our customers were primarily heavy manual workers, I would offer mashed potatoes as the second side—mashed potatoes are always consumed in the highest volume.

Don’t buy “just in case.” If you estimate consumption at 30 kg, don’t purchase 35 kg. Of course, you need a backup plan for what to serve if you run out, but buying just in case is a guaranteed way to shrink your margins.
Buy from where it’s most cost-effective. Consolidating all your purchases with a single large wholesaler might maximize your rebates, but you’ll pay more overall. Large wholesalers likely offer the lowest prices on bulk ingredients through net-price lists, but you’ll pay extra for everything else. Convenience comes at a cost!
Negotiate your pricing. When you can accurately project your consumption for the coming months, you can negotiate better pricing. With the right partners, this is entirely achievable!