The lunch menu looks like a small task: you choose a few dishes, write them down and show them. That is exactly why it is rarely measured. Nobody writes down that every morning you come back to the same thing several times. When you do it for a week, the number often comes as a surprise.
This article is not a set of instructions for making a menu. It shows how to measure what the lunch menu costs you and where the minutes go. It looks at one example day and one example calculation, which you can replace with your own values.
Example scenario: a typical working day
Example scenario. A restaurant with its own kitchen offers a lunch menu from Monday to Friday. Every morning the owner or manager prepares the menu on their own. The times below are assumed and were chosen to make the steps visible, not to tell you how long it should take in your case.
Step 1. Deciding what will be on the menu — 10 minutes
The ingredients in stock, yesterday’s leftovers and what has already been on the menu this week are reviewed. Often this is a conversation with the cook that is interrupted by other tasks.
Step 2. Writing the list — 10 minutes
The dishes, weights and prices are written down. The price of the soup or the main course is checked against yesterday’s, because nobody remembers exactly.
Step 3. Formatting — 15 minutes
The text is put into a document or a ready-made template. It is aligned, the spelling is corrected, the date is changed. This is the dullest step, and often the longest.
Step 4. Printing and distributing — 10 minutes
Several sheets are printed for the tables, the entrance and the bar. Someone has to remove yesterday’s sheets.
Step 5. Publishing on Facebook — 10 minutes
The menu is photographed or made into an image and uploaded with a short text. Sometimes it is also added to other groups or chats.
Step 6. Telling the waiters on site — 5 minutes
The waiters find out what has run out, what has been changed and what the price is. This information is passed on verbally and is forgotten by lunchtime.
Step 7. Corrections during the day — 5 minutes
A dish runs out, or the price is wrong. It is corrected on paper, while the old version stays on Facebook.
Total: 65 minutes a day. That is not much for one day. The problem is that it repeats.
Example calculation
Assumptions: five working days a week, 22 working days a month, 65 minutes a day, an assumed price of €8 for one hour of work (the salary and social security contributions of the person who does it, or the value of your own time), and €0.25 a day for printing. All values are illustrative.
- Per week: 5 times 65 minutes is 325 minutes, about 5.4 hours.
- Per month: 22 times 65 minutes is 1,430 minutes, about 24 hours. At €8 an hour, that is about €190 of time.
- Printing adds about €5.50 a month.
The calculation does not say that you will save exactly this much. It shows the order of magnitude. If an hour costs more in your case, the amount grows; if the menu changes less often, it shrinks.
Where the minutes are lost
Most often not in each step on its own, but between them.
- Repetition: the same list is written, formatted and published in three places. Each copy is new work.
- Interruption: when the cook or the manager stops cooking or serving in order to write, the cost is higher than the minutes suggest.
- Late information: a guest asks for a dish that is no longer available. That is an unpleasant conversation and lost trust.
- Outdated copies: yesterday’s menu stays on the table or on Facebook.
- Wrong price: a lunch price is mixed up with the price from the main menu and is only noticed at the till.
These costs do not show up on any bill, but they are felt.
How to measure your own week
- Choose an ordinary week, not a holiday one.
- Write down in a notebook the start and end of each step. Do not round them.
- Note separately how many times the menu had to be corrected after publishing.
- At the end of the week, add up the minutes and multiply by the real value of an hour.
- Mark the three longest steps. That is where it is worth changing something.
It often turns out that the longest step is different from the one you think it is. If formatting takes longer than writing, the problem is in the format, not in the choice of dishes.
What can be changed
Before you think about a tool, you can try simple things: the same template every day, one main source of truth with copies only as links to it, a single person who makes the corrections. There are more ideas in the guide to a lunch menu without daily reprinting.
If you want the menu to be one place that produces both the page for guests and the print sheet, this can be done in ISKA Menu. The lunch menu is part of the Plus plan. You change it from the portal or from your phone. Changes are drafts until you publish them, and the link to the menu stays the same. The Plus plan also has a print menu. For current prices, see the pricing page.
This is convenient only if you already know where your minutes go. So start with measuring.