Success Story

Shrimp Shack Seafood Kitchen Implements Prime Cost Reporting System and Improves Food and Labor Costs

Nate Abosini and his brother Fred have gotten a good handle on controlling food cost and labor, thanks to RestaurantOwner.com.

"Implementing the Prime Cost Worksheet was the best thing I could have done in 2018," says Nate. "I previously only used QuickBooks and that was only done for the month. Today, we review our spreadsheets by the day and also by the week."

Indeed, Abosini continues, "The Prime Cost Worksheet that we got from RestaurantOwner.com really opened my eyes. In one of the webinars there was something about monitoring cost weekly. What really happens is that you are able to control it before it's too late."

With QuickBooks, he found, "you are really not even paying attention until the end of the month once you reconcile the bank statement and all the other accounting stuff, and by that time how can you rectify anything that happened three weeks ago? Usually it's a little too late, and so it kind of opened my eyes at that particular moment, and we implemented it." Today, he adds, "I see that it was one of the best things we've ever done."

Food cost had previously run at about 42% to 43%. "I know that's a little high, and I have always thought it was a little high for the seafood business," Abosini admits. "Once we started doing the weekly worksheets, we got food cost down to what we're running right now, about 36%."

The restaurants' labor cost "was a big one, as well," he recalls. "The labor cost was running usually, at the high-end, 30%. Now we are running at probably 22% or 23%."

A key part of the changes involved the training component. Each of the general managers is a veteran, Abosini explains, who trained both. The senior GM, A.C. Abnamia, was trained first. "He showed up at the time that I was implementing this, and so I trained him. Then I went to the other store and spent a couple of weeks with the other GM, Kelly Leist, to make sure she understood it."

The change has been substantial. "Now my GMs are able to look at spreadsheets and see where they can improve, versus the owners having all the information in QuickBooks that managers don't have access to. They can view everything on the fly without having to go into a POS system and open 25 files to get a company snapshot."

Additional employee training will remain a priority for the foreseeable future, Abosini says. "Right now what we are working on is staff training, which is an ongoing issue. I think we are asking too much of them to know too much at one time; we are expecting too much out of them."

What he and his brother see continually happening is that new hires are put in positions for which they are not yet ready. "They come into the restaurant - they are kind of thrown out there - and they are expected to learn everything. I think that's the wrong way of doing things."

Abosini believes that this process as much as anything contributes to too-high turnover numbers. "I believe personally that this is why people are coming and going. As soon as we can hire them, they're gone. It's like we can't keep staff, and I think it's because we are expecting too much out of them, and we're not giving them the proper training. So I feel that we need to do a better job."

The brothers took action and began incorporating micro learning videos into their training. Says Abosini, "I just needed something a little bit more in-depth for my business, something that said 'This is what we do, and this is how we do it.' Training videos are very important, and effective."