Restaurant & Food Service Operations

Operation Auditing & Structure

– Winona LaDuke

“Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships.”

Waitress preparing for service and a fish dish served with a cream sauce

Operation Auditing & Structure

Refine, Optimize, Position

As the food and beverage industry rapidly evolves through shifts in consumer trends, delivery methods, and emerging brands, your business is positioned to transform and thrive like never before. But if your operation is not in position and up-to-date then you could be leaving money on the table. 

SCS will objectively evaluate your dad-to-day to identify potential efficiencies, cost savings opportunities, back-of-house kitchen and front-of-house improvements, and management procedures. We’ll work with you to set realistic goals to reduce labor and other costs that create cost-effective efficiencies. 

Menu Development

Build Consumer Profiles Through Menu Development

Determine strengths and weaknesses for flavors, ingredients, and other key attributes among subsets and consumers. Uncover the latest trends in alcoholic beverages.

Identify menu opportunities and leverage the latest consumer ratings to build retention and create a better customer experience.

A happy customer biting into an appetizer while eating with friends
Ali Gonzalez of Sustainable Culinary Solutions wins first place in the Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce contest

Concept development & innovation

Harness the power of the leading food consultants with SCS.

Predict trends, innovate your ideas, and find new customers with astounding ease.

Ali Gonzalez
A restaurant manager and cooking staff

Team Cultivating

Good Leaders Cultivate High Performing Teams

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Investing in signature relationship practices

Executives can encourage collaborative behavior by making highly visible investments that demonstrate their commitment to collaboration.

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Modeling collaborative behavior

At companies where the senior executives demonstrate highly collaborative behavior themselves, teams collaborate well.

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Creating a “gift culture”

Mentoring and coaching – especially on an informal basis – help people build the networks they need to work across corporate boundaries.

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Supporting a strong sense of community

When people feel a sense of community, they are more comfortable reaching out to others and more likely to share knowledge.

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Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity

Cooperation increases when the roles of individual team members are sharply defined yet the team is given latitude on how to achieve the task.

Unfortunately, most companies do not follow these rules and this is the largest reason for turnovers and lawsuits. 

Sales & Procurement Optimization

Vendors & Technology

4 ways to optimize procurement in food service operations to help supply chain leaders to improve performance in this uncertain and volatile market.

  1. Focus on transparency
  2. Improve supplier engagement 
  3. Focus on inventory optimization
  4. Leverage automation 

Data is crucial for procurement teams because, without the data, they cannot track the spending on goods and services and manage supplier and vendor relationships. The increasing number of data enables procurement teams to manage cost savings and supplier/vendor performance risk.

Unfortunately, most restaurant establishments do not have the time to manage all of this or update their technology, and as we all know Food & Labor are the major losses in the industry. SCS helps you obtain the right vendors and technology to maintain today’s industry standards. 

A farmer and corn stalks
A chef carefully plating a refined desert and cocktail

Restaurant & Food Trends

Shaping the Future of the Industry

With trends continuing to move at a faster pace, our team of food industry researchers enables you to identify and monitor cutting-edge foods, ingredients, and concepts before they become mainstream. 

Unique recipes will help you stand out and can even establish a niche area for you to fall into. Creating and testing these recipes though can be overwhelming. We can show you how to sustainably design new recipes without losing lots of money and creating unnecessary food waste.

It is also a great opportunity to channel in those fresh, organic, healthy options to begin the movement forward to be healthier and kinder to our bodies. Plant-based food diets and ethically sourced and grown foods are not only on the trend but gaining popularity, which will entice customers as well as fund your business.

An Experience With Chef Ali

fr8man01

Customer at Ledges Restaurant at The White Mountain Hotel

Chef Ali Gonzalez is AMAZiNG; Anthony Bourdain (RIP), eat your heart out!!! We've dined extensively, including abroad. Best restaurant in NH---LIKELY!!! Lexi's service is stellar. Restaurant is GF/GFM accommodating. Ledges is truly NOT to be missed!!! Chef's specials are creative, sustainable, and frankly, incredibly delicious!

Turnarounds

Get Your Restaurant Up To Speed

Turning around a single unit operation or turning around a foodservice chain requires a company that has experience and success turning around underperforming restaurants, Sustainable Culinary Solutions specializes in this complex situation with operations expertise, financial and marketing services, as well as focused restaurant management leadership.

This program is only for companies willing to invest the capital needed and have the sheer desire to change. Our assessment will identify the challenges and create a plan to move forward to restructure or relaunch your business. All of this will consist of bringing your operation up to date with the latest trends; Technology (POS), Menu Development Optimization, Human Resources (update required job descriptions), and Employee Training. 

A manager with his procurement list and someone paying for their meal with their phone
An hr manager checking his computer and paperwork

Special Restaurant Services

Human Resource Optimization

The new approach is called “Human Resource Optimization” (HRO).

It means understanding the skills required for a job, understanding an employee’s strengths and weaknesses, and then finding a way to leverage the strengths and minimize the weaknesses to get the job done effectively.

It involves looking, not just your performance, but also your natural affinity/preferences/potential to determine how to develop you. This requires you to be assessed on your current performance as well as your personality traits.

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Caution

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Capitalize

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Compensate

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Support

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Develop

Takeout & Delivery Organization

Strengthen Your Go-To-Market 

Under one platform, achieve a 360 view so you can increase sales, including market KPIs, knowledge of competitor introductions, and pricing. We help you identify menu selections and paper products that hold and travel well with the delivery. 

A Cook and food to go
A Chef buying fresh greens for a vegetable dish and artichokes

Procurement Auditing and Contract Negotiation

Purchasing properly can make or break it in the culinary industry.

We will step in and help you figure out where you are losing money, where you can maximize money, and how to reduce all that waste that you get each week.

It is extremely important to evaluate not only what you need to buy, but also from where. This could be anything from supporting more local sellers to finding ways to be more resourceful with products you use.

Following Contracts Can Be Challenging

We're Here To Help

Following contracts can be a difficult prospect to begin and maintain.  We will help you by building schedules, creating checklists, and helping you understand the lingo.  We create organization systems that genuinely work.  Many businesses simply do not know where to begin.  Fortunately, we can help you start and learn how to continue managing contracts and sticking to them every day.

Keeping up to date with the industry, state, federal, local, and national guidelines is pertinent to maintaining quality service.  Our team of experts show you exactly how to do that.  By following your contracts, you will not only operate a safer and better business, but also learn priceless tactics in organization and management.

A young restaurant owner and paperwork
A farmer holding local radishes for a refined rice dish with mushrooms and truffle

Sustainable Restaurant Practices

It's As Much About The Business As The Food

Whole and natural foods are better to work with, help support local agriculture, are healthier for customers, and are more beneficial to the environment. Appealing to all types of diets, such as vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, keto, or more all help to create a safe and accepting culture for clients and also diversify you from the masses.

In choosing fresh ingredients from local farms, or even growing produce or herbs on the premises, we can show you that making a sustainable food program is a great way to reinvent a stale business, and also stay competitive. You will save money in shipping, reduce waste, and also gain much more business, all while knowing that you are growing from the inside out as a company and using your resources efficiently.

Robert W. Phillips
CEC, CCA, AAC, HGT

Western Regional Vice President,
American Culinary Federation

"I have known Chef Gonzalez for several years now. I have seen him interacting with students and work to bring them to a professional level, as well cooked with him and experienced his culinary skills firsthand. Chef Gonzalez or Ali, as I call him, is no stranger to exciting and domineering cuisines and professionalism in the field of the Culinary Arts!"

Still Planning?

The Sustainable Restaurant Plan

You can get started with my book which reveals how to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and maximize profits.

The Sustainable Restaurant Plan

Latest Trends

Culinary Excellence

Ali A Gonzalez Seal of Recognition for Outstanding Leadership Award at the Food 2.0 Conference

We share topics ranging from world cuisines and cooking trends to the latest in wellness, sustainability, and food ethics.