- Our sales are slowly improving, but are way lower than I anticipated. This is my biggest concern. It's hard to do anything without enough customers.
- Labor costs are steadily declining. Today we are operating on a skeleton crew: one regular hourly employee, two waitresses working staggered shifts, me and my business partner. Our total labor cost will be about $65 today - I can live with that.
- Food costs are also headed in the right direction but are still too high. Yesterday I completed an inventory and our food cost was 45% of sales. We need this to be under 28%. It is high because of overcooking and mistakes being made.
I am about to invest in some advertising. I can place a coupon in Val-Pak for the 20,000 homes nearest the restaurant for $489 per month. We are also posting fliers with our menu in various places and I send out a weekly email. The weather is also improving and that has to help sales as well.
We are still not out of danger of failing - that remains a high probability. But we've made huge improvements in the last 4 weeks.
Good luck,it sounds like your working hard thats all you can do.
ReplyDelete