Restaurant Efficiency: Strategic Kitchen Reconfigurations
- By Aaron Allen
Enhanced Restaurant Efficiency and Profitability Via Strategic Kitchen Reconfigurations: Ignite Your Restaurant’s Future
In the fast-paced restaurant industry, staying ahead of the competition requires constant innovation and adaptation. One of the most impactful changes you can make is optimizing your kitchen layout and operations. At Aaron Allen & Associates, we specialize in strategic kitchen reconfigurations that not only streamline your back-of-house processes but also significantly boost your bottom line.
Why Reconfigure Your Kitchen Now?
- Increase Efficiency:By rethinking your kitchen’s design, you can reduce food preparation times, minimize waste, and enhance overall productivity. An optimized layout means your team can work on your menumore smoothly and effectively, which translates to faster service and happier customers.
- Technology Integration:Modern kitchens must leverage the latest technology to stay competitive. From automated cooking systems to advanced inventory management, integrating new tech can reduce labor costs and improve accuracy, leading to better margins and fewer errors.
- Scalability:As your restaurant grows, so should your kitchen. A well-planned reconfiguration will accommodate future expansion and new menus, ensuring that your kitchen can handle increased demand without compromising on service quality.
How to Approach Your Kitchen Reconfiguration and Drive Tangible Results
- Discovery Phase: Begin with a comprehensive assessment of your current kitchen setup, identifying key areas for improvement.
- Design & Development: Get a team of experts to create a customized reconfiguration plan, incorporating the latest trends and technologies.
- Deployment: Implementation of the new design, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations.
- Continuous Improvement: Post-deployment, there has to be ongoing support and adjustments to ensure sustained efficiency and profitability.
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Why Should You Optimize Your Operations? Even if You Are Not Doing Anything, Your Competition Is Retooling…
Publicly traded restaurant chains in the U.S., whether lightly, moderately, or heavily franchised systems are investing more in CAPEX.
Back in 2021 we said: This is the first year that is riskier to not rip out the legacy systems than to leave them out as-is. Tech is enabling competitive moat-building; we think we are on track to about a third of CAPEX allocated to tech.
How much CAPEX should we plan on comparative to “normal” years prior basis? Should we expect the same or different MOIC / IRR? Why? How do we help the board and shareholders see the wisdom in our choices? These are some of the questions we are helping executive teams answer.
The Restaurant Chains That Are Growing Are Putting Their Money Where Their Mouths Are
There are different ways for restaurant chains to grow and investment is required for it to pay off in the short and long term. For chains that are not growing via franchising (or that are doing so to an extent but still growing corporate stores), growth (and a high level of CAPEX to open new stores) requires building infrastructure to deploy the pipeline ahead of time, and that usually entails a higher SG&A percentage for some time until the stores are at their full revenue generating status.
Two good examples are sweetgreen and Dutch Bros, both growing steadily over the last few years and with plans to continue to do so. Their CAPEX is considerably higher than the industry median, reflecting unit openings. SG&A for these companies is coming at the median or higher, supporting the corporate infrastructure needed to expand.
Just as radar technology has improved dramatically for the weather industry, the same advancements can be made to corporate preparedness. The best and most successful companies (across sectors) worldwide are making investments into CAPEX, R&D, intelligence, and their own organizations (systems, processes, and organizational design) with a determination to win that can easily demoralize anyone half-heartedly standing up against it.
There Is a Brand New Cycle In The Foodservice Industry. It’s Unlike Anything Before.
The last 130 years of US restaurant industry data will reveal some predictable patterns that mirror economic conditions, but this new cycle is absolutely unique. It’s as transformative to global foodservice and hospitality as was the Cotton Ginny to agriculture or the automobile to transportation.
We are working with leadership teams of many of the biggest and brightest brand stars in the universe of foodservice and can communicate with clarity: we all realize this is something new and will require radically different thinking and approaches to navigate what’s ahead.
It’s as exhilarating as it is exhausting to paddle through these rapids, but those with stamina and courage will transverse and transcend the new dynamics driving performance in the global restaurant industry.
We’re so proud to roll up our sleeves and work alongside executive teams of emerging and established brands that are inspired to contribute something new. Will it be robotics? AI? IoT? Something else? These are the questions we’re helping executive teams size up and seize as part of their growth planning and strategic development. Exciting times!
About Aaron Allen & Associates
Aaron Allen & Associates works alongside senior executives of the world’s leading foodservice and hospitality companies to help them solve their most complex challenges and achieve their most ambitious aims. We have helped evaluate and engineer menus for some of the world’s largest restaurant brands, as well as helped restaurant companies around the world drive revenues, increase profits, and enhance the guest experience through improved marketing, messaging, and menu engineering.
Our clients span six continents and 100+ countries, collectively posting more than $300b in revenue. Across 2,000+ engagements, we’ve worked in nearly every geography, category, cuisine, segment, operating model, ownership type, and phase of the business life cycle.
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