If done correctly the food service business can be quite lucrative. Apart from the large restaurant chains, well run independent restaurant businesses can be very profitable. President Obama’s pledge to help small business in the United States has encouraged many entrepreneurs to open their own restaurants. This is one reason why the restaurant industry continues to grow year after year.

Driving this year to year demand within the restaurant industry is the need for home meal replacement. With more and more home owners and married couples busy working two jobs, they have sought meal options outside their homes. With both parents working full time they do not have enough time to cook for themselves. Naturally the demand for home meal replacement continues to increase.

Secondly, as the world becomes a smaller place and people of different ethnic origins diverge, people grow increasingly eager to sample foods and cuisines from different parts of the world. This has increased the demand for authentic exotic dishes from all parts of the globe. It has also increased the demand for dishes with big flavors.

St the same time people have also become interested in eating organic, natural and healthful foods. And as seen in some of the popular grocery stores, people are willing to pay a premium for full flavored and healthy dishes. Previous to these trends few people were concerned about the nutritional information of what they ate. For many restaurateurs, serving healthy, organic and natural foods is an excellent way to reach health conscious consumers who look for traditional dishes with ingredients that are considered to be healthy.

Thus the catering industry is going grow in the future. If you want to reap the rich dividends that this field offers, you may get in touch with food and beverage consultant.

Food service consultants can guide you towards the appropriate restaurant segments of the market you ought to target. Like all other businesses, a well chalked-out strategy will enable you to be aware of the challenges that you may face and deal with them swiftly. Food and beverage consultants have the expertise to assist you in creating a plan that meets your precise needs. Food and beverage consulting firms can tell you how to conduct market research for best results.

Before you start your business, you should also have a marketing and promotion plan. If you concentrate merely on cooking well and not on branding and advertising your products, customers will not know about you and you will be killed by competition. Food service consultants will also be able to help you to come up with new products on a regular basis, so that your loyal customers do have to go elsewhere when they want to try something out of the ordinary.

Encouraging employees to embrace change is hard, especially when they are comfortable with their old way of doing things and see no reason to change. Investing in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for your food and beverage manufacturing company can be a big investment that provides amazing benefits and opportunity for greater productivity. However, unless your team is on board and dedicated to learning and using the new system, the project will never serve your company to its full potential. In fact, even if the employee understands that it will make their job easier, oftentimes they will seek out ways to circumvent the ERP and continue using their old spreadsheets and reports. Companies that have a plan to engage their staff in learning the new system will likely see much greater results and a much better ROI than those who simply expect full participation.

How to Engage the Staff

Making employees a real part of the transition from the old system to the new ERP is critical to having their full cooperation. For many companies, asking for feedback, providing up to date information about the implementation throughout the process, and provided proper training both before, during, and after the system is in place is an important step to encourage them to use it. And though you may think you are too busy to take the time needed to do this successfully, the truth is you probably just haven’t spent much time planning to make it work and viewing it as a real priority. Ensuring the staff has some level of comfort with the system before they are asked to use it day to day may be more investment of time and resources, but will certainly be worth the attention. Also, until the old systems have been completely removed, there will likely be a temptation to revert back to the way they know best. Both group and individual training is valuable to help overcome that temptation.

It’s also very important that executives and company officials show their full support and enthusiasm for ERP. To do this well, they must fully understand how the system works and what it will provide. They should be well trained and open to fielding questions from those beneath them on the company hierarchy. Leaders are followed, whether a good leader or a poor one. If your company expects the employees to fully take advantage of the system, you should expect the executive team to do so as well.

The Importance of User-Friendly and Well Running Systems

Choosing an ERP system and vendor specialized in the food and beverage manufacturing industry ensures that the system will be easier to use and will likely operate much more effectively than a generic system. If a system is difficult to use and regularly has issues in performance, it will be hard to sell it to the company at large.

It’s clear that using an ERP solution will provide great gains in productivity and increase performance. It will allow your organization to reach new heights and better navigate the highly competitive food and beverage industry. However without full support of those using the system, implementation can actually harm you more than help you. Taking steps to ensure employees are engaged and welcoming of the new system is crucial to benefitting from it fully.

In the Philippines, there are so many food and beverage exporters and exporting companies. Aside from the fact that there are many Filipinos looking for the local products from where they are working in a country, far from their own. Filipinos are really fond of their local or native products and with this as the case, different countries today where there are OFWs or overseas Filipino workers put up their own business where local Philippine products are sold for personal consumption.

Nations where Filipinos and local nationals are working even both like some of the local food and beverage products that the Filipinos buy from local Filipino Food Stores. One good example would be the best beer in the Philippines which is San Miguel Beer. Filipinos like this beer so much more than other beers they can buy from any country and some foreign nationals even have learned to like and drink this beer and would buy regularly, making it not just good to sell to Filipinos but also to foreign nationals in that country.

Not just these kinds of local Filipino food and beverage commodities but also some of the best local buys from liquor to biscuits and even down to the local delicacies that you can find in the Philippines were now being sold at a much higher price than the usual in the native country, Philippines. Even if this is the case, Filipinos have learned to like the feeling of being close to their families in this small way so the result is that these local delicacies from the Philippines become one of the most popular Philippine products that exporters look to present and export in many countries all over the world where Filipinos work.

Some good examples of great Philippine products that were made available by Filipino food and beverage exporting companies today were, the local “bagoong” (shrimp paste), San Miguel Brewery products – San Miguel Beer, Mama Sita’s – mixes and sauces, M.Y. San Biscuits, Rebisco Biscuits, Nestle products, La Tondena products and more. There are really a lot of Philippine products that don’t just make the Filipinos happy when they work abroad and have learned to like and buy whatever country in the world they may be. The reason is because these same export products were their own small way of allowing themselves to feel comfort tasting local food and beverages.

There is also a big market share for different food and beverage exporting companies when we talk in terms of market distribution for these products, making the life of a Filipino better in any country they are available for purchase. Foreigners have also learned to love some of these products and this made a big sale for local distributors, proof that Philippine products have a market not just for Filipinos but also for other people in the world.

There are many providers of enterprise resource planning systems and food and beverage process manufacturers should be cautious when deciding the best one for their operations. Chances are, investing in an ERP system is a decision that will continue to benefit them, or cause them headaches for years to come. Choosing a system must include many considerations not only for the present, but also the future. If it is not a system developed specifically for the food and beverage process manufacturing industry, chances are pretty good that it will not have the various features you need. Also, changes in compliance, competition, and company growth can severely change your ERP needs. This can make finding the right ERP more challenging, but there are ways that you can be reassured that the ERP you choose will suit your unique needs.

Food and Beverage Specific

The number one focus you should have before even beginning to look for an ERP system is ensuring that the ERP provider you choose has a system designed specifically for the food and beverage industry. When it comes to ERP’s the lowest bidder with the biggest promises may end up a complete disaster. You vendor should specialize in providing industry specific solutions and have the ability to show you they are experienced in them. Ask them for references to other similar companies they have served and do your research. Reputable ERP providers will be more than happy to answer your questions and discuss their experience and your specific needs.

There are a number of reasons why this focus is important. First, through their experience in the food and beverage manufacturing industry, they will have come across and found solutions for many common issues that you may face. They also will have a better grasp on the needs of similar businesses and will have individuals on staff that will be more likely to have a background in the field. It eliminates the time consuming process of training your provider in food and beverage manufacturing so they are able to implement a system. Finally, an industry specific provider will have the functionality needed in your key business areas.

Key Focus Areas

Even if you do seek out only providers who focus on the food and beverage industry, it is important to make sure that their systems can answer to several key issues that face you. By obtaining right ERP capabilities, you will be proficient in meeting industry demands all while increasing your profits, satisfying your customers, and improving productivity. It is important that you will have the essential technologies to detect and immediately overcome challenges that come at any time throughout your operational processes. While this is not a complete list, it is a basic look at functionality that food and beverage manufacturers need in an effective solution.

Flexible and Extensive Lot Control
Code Tracking
Materials Tracing
Regulation Management
FDA Requirements
Storage and Handling
Packaging and Labeling
Recall Management
Test/Mock Recalls
Recall Data Organization
Expiration Date Monitoring
Warning Notices
Inventory Rotation Management
Waste Tracking
Growth Capabilities
Addition of Processes
Additional User Support

ERP solutions can be an amazing tool that will do wonders for your business, but it is important to remember that without the right ERP, those benefits begin to lessen rapidly. An ERP provider that caters to the food and beverage industry can help you ensure that your investment in a system is a wise one.

Restaurants, pubs, and eateries, and any business that serves food and beverages, are always tricky places to do accounting. There are many reasons why food and beverages are difficult to track: they are consumable, food and beverages can spoil, and orders can be returned to the kitchen by customers. Food and beverage accounting principles can help to prevent financial losses for your establishment. If you follow these simple pieces of advice your business can improve its accounting, and hopefully increase profits.

Conduct Menu Engineering

Before you open your establishment or consider introducing a new menu item, you should conduct some menu engineering. This involves analyzing how many meals a certain amount of food can make, and determining the price that a customer will pay for an item. Menu engineering also determines an item’s popularity, and therefore, its profitability. This is the start of quantifying and controlling food and beverage for accounting purposes.

Use Standardized Recipes

The use of standardized recipes that are followed by everyone in the kitchen is the next step in food and beverage accounting. You need to make sure that your food inventory will make a certain number of meals, and your beverages are poured to a common standard. All employees should be trained to follow these guidelines. When they don’t, your business is losing money and profit.

Track Sales Carefully

All of your staff that deals with ringing in meals, customer payments, and cashing out cash registers should be trained to do so properly and diligently. Proper training can prevent many errors at the till that can throw off inventory and skew your accounting numbers. Make sure that everyone is well versed in how to use the register and your food and beverage accounting will be so much simpler.

Strict Purchasing Guidelines

Everyone in your establishment should be aware of and adhere to strict purchasing guidelines in order to establish effective food and beverage accounting. There should be one person designated to make purchases for the business, and he or she should be informed of inventory counts so that he or she can place orders. This prevents over ordering and food spoilage, which cause eateries a lot of money! Prevent this by putting a procedure in place before ordering and purchasing becomes an issue for you.

Have Effective Inventory Management

Effective inventory practices are essential to proper food and beverage accounting. You should create inventory sheets and an inventory policy that guides employees as to how often they should conduct inventories, and how they should be conducted. Inventories can aid with ordering the necessary amount of supplies, and also with determining if standardized recipes are being followed.

Food and beverage accounting is essential to the success of any eatery. You need to do menu engineering to determine the profitability and costs of individual items, and you need strict recipe inventory and purchasing guidelines to make sure food orders are being used to their full potential. If you own a restaurant, pub, or bar, it’s extremely important that you implement the suggestions detailed above to improve your food and beverage accounting practices.