Consistent Product Portioning Leads To Higher Profits

Product portioning is one of the most important facets of developing a profitable food truck. Not only does it affect your food truck’s bottom line, but it also helps build a stronger customer experience. It affects your guests’ experience, food quality and food cost.

How Consistent Product Portioning Leads To Higher Profits

When someone receives a smaller portion of as particular ingredient amount in a menu item (say the protein in a sandwich) as the person standing next to them, customers usually take notice and many will get upset.

People like consistency. Whether it’s a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for. – Millard Drexler

During your food prep process, inaccurate quantities of ingredients in recipes will change the food’s flavor and texture. Have you ever heard a regular customer ask, “What did you change in your sauce?”

Now you need to look at the issue of food cost. Consistently over portioning a $5.00 per pound product just half an ounce adds almost 16 cents to the serving cost. Now let’s say you serve 50 or those items a day, that’s $55 lost per week or almost $3,000 in a year and that’s with just ONE product.

Create A Product Portioning System

Anything you can do to help you and your food truck staff do a better job of portioning is usually money well spent. Do you or your commercial kitchen supply your staff with the appropriate sized cups, scoops and scales? If so, do they consistently use them?

The new scales and slicing equipment that is on the market helps make it easier for faster portioning with much greater accuracy.

Testing Your System

Make sure you conduct random testing. If you don’t do this already pull one item off the line each shift and weigh the key ingredients. If something’s not right, you will know right away that something is wrong and you can address the issue immediately.

The Bottom Line

So how’s the product portioning on your food truck? Any improvement in this area will give you great results in the areas of happy customers, lower food cost and ultimately a healthier bottom line.

Did we miss any areas where product portioning affects a food truck business? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comment section, our food truck forum or social media. Twitter | Facebook

By Richard Myrick|2019-09-19T09:00:34-04:00Sep 19, 2019|Business|

About the Author: Richard Myrick

Richard Myrick is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born. Richard also wrote the "Running a Food Truck for Dummies" available in bookstores everywhere and Amazon. You can reach out to Richard by email at: [email protected].