Your portion control question is a bit of tough one to give an easy answer to. There are a lot of good sites out there with generic amounts/cost factors/information. Joe (who does the food control blog) is happy to answer questions and is very knowledge (one of the reasons we are cross linked) he's also a sweetheart.
Your best bet though if you haven't done it already (I used to do this when I was cooking for a living)
Put in an excel spreadsheet most of your stock grocery items.And then do individual ones for the recipes.
If you are comfortable putting formulas in, I would cross reference them so the info from the main (grocery) feeds into the recipe sheets. This way you can track both portion size and the variable prices. Don't forget to factor in your yields for products if you don't already.
I don't think your wrong about the portion sizes, this is a pretty common problem, I used to deal with it all the time especially with line cooks and waitstaff adding an couple of extra tomato slices and "a few" more specialty olives because the plates looked a little "bare" LOL.
Ha, ha, tell me about the 'bare' plates! Actually, tho, we made a pointed decision to add 'flair' to the plates and it has made the dining experience so much better. The presentation is spot on and guests ooh and aah and say it looks "too good to eat, where's my camera?" before they dive in. THAT is worth the extra $10/week for 'frills.'
Hate to say it but we have never tracked food costs except to add it up at the end of the year and divide by the number of guests. It holds pretty steady no matter what we're making. I just get panicky now when it seems like there is a lot more food left over after the guests are gone.
Part of the problem is Gomez comes from a very large family so he's familiar with cooking 10 lbs of potatoes for dinner. My family had 1 potato/person so 10 lbs of potatoes looks huge to me! At least he's comfortable cooking for crowds!
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Hi M,
"Hate to say it but we have never tracked food costs except to add it up at the end of the year and divide by the number of guests."
I actually cringed when you said that. Please shoot me, its ok.
Does it just seem like there is more food left over or are you actually tracking it? If not, start a waste list (just like in a restaurant) and itemize what and how much is getting thrown out. You may start to find some trends in this,
i.e. its mostly the blueberry pancakes or the granola getting chucked for example. Did you change recipes or start using a different brand? or perhaps the recipe just needs adjusting. Your using a different brand of frozen blueberries for example. This is a bit more sour then the previous brand used, go back to the old brand or adjust the sweetness.
If the flavor and quality is not an issue on pancakes for example, try cutting them back from 3 to 2, or try smaller sizes and see if there is as much wastage. If you are adding flair to the plates the smaller amounts should not be as noticable and if it is and you have the ability/availability of doing it, use smaller plates for service.
But the only way you'll get the answer to the "it seems" issue is actually track it and identify what the wastage is. I hear you on the Gomez thing. I still have trouble cooking for 2 sometimes when I'm used to cooking for several hundred.
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