Creating dishes that appeal to your guests is crucial to the success of your business, but how do complexity scores factor into your menu? Complexity scores represent a rating for the level of difficulty associated with the items on your menu, and once you start looking at those scores, you’ll find ways to up your margins and grow profitability.
As you work through your menu, there are several categories to consider when assigning your complexity scores.
- Assembly average: The amount of time it takes to prepare the dish.
- Cook average: The amount of time it takes to cook the dish or heat a product, typically measured in minutes.
- Cook assembly rating: This is a rating assigned to the difficulty of assembling the dish.
- Total number of prep recipes used: If the preparation of a recipe requires recipes for multiple parts, for example, a soup requiring noodles and broth, then it receives a higher rating.
- Total number of prep recipes used: If a recipe requires recipes for several parts, for example, a sauce, then it gets rated higher.
- Number of unique ingredients: This applies if the dish requires an ingredient that is not used for any other dish, like edamame, for example, if it’s only used in one salad on the menu.
- Number of stations required: The number of locations the dish needs to be passed through to be prepared.
Assign a value to each of these categories (and any other categories that are relevant to your restaurant) to compile a list of scores for your menu.
How to use complexity scores
Complexity scores serve to highlight where your best profitability lies, so you can prioritize those dishes and streamline your menu to maximize your margins.
It is a bit of a ripple effect, though. Not only does this strategy help you improve costing today, but it also helps you plan ahead with a comprehensive budget going forward. Getting familiar with the system and the scores means that you can better look ahead and create menus going forward that focus on dishes with lower scores and better bottom lines. Even your marketing plan can be adjusted to place emphasis on the higher complexity dishes to sell more and raise profits.
Once you take a look at the above factors, you can better manage your inventory, raise revenues, and provide a superior experience for your guests.
