Food portioning, while often overlooked, needs to be looked at as one of the most important activities in your food truck business. Not only does food portioning make an immediate impact on your customers’ experience but it also affects the food quality and food cost of your menu items.

When someone receives a smaller portion than the person who ordered the exact same thing right before them, customers usually notice and their mood sours.

Proper Food Portioning For Your Food Truck

Start At The Beginning

During the preparation process, inaccurate food portioning of ingredients in recipes can alter the food’s flavor and texture. Have you ever had a regular customer ask, “what have you done to the sauce?”

Food Portioning And Cost

Maybe the bigger issue that concerns food truck owners is how food portioning hits their bottom line. Think about it like this. Consistently over portioning a $6.00 per pound product just half an ounce adds almost 19 cents to the serving cost. Say you serve 100 a day, that’s $133 lost per week or almost $7,000 in a year.

That’s with just ONE product! Imagine the cost savings for your entire menu if food portioning became an integral part of your systems?

Use Technology For Food Portioning

Technological advances in scales and slicing equipment keeps making it easier for employees to portion products faster and with much greater accuracy. The newest digital scales are portable, easy to read. They also have automatic counting functions and can be equipped with push button or hands free capabilities.

Anything you can do to help your staff do a better job of portioning is usually money well spent. Does your staff have the appropriate sized cups, scoops, ladles and other measuring devises at their disposal and are they consistently using the correct ones?

Also, never expect what you don’t inspect. One food truck owner I know has a habit of pulling one item off the line each shift and weighing the key ingredients. If something’s not right, he addresses the issue immediately with his staff. He says that this one practice, more than any other, helps him control portion sizes and keep his food cost in line.

RELATED: Cost Cutting: Protein Portioning May Be The Right Way

The Bottom Line

Any improvement in food portioning should result in happier guests, lower food cost and a healthier bottom line. Do you have any food portioning tips to share with our readers? We’d love to hear them. Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Twitter | Facebook