Food Service Menus: Pricing and Managing the Food Service Menu for Maximun Profit (The Food Service Professional Guide to Series 13)

I like this book the only thing is its smaller then I hoped for but over all its a great buy

Perfect for my culinary classes.

I do not own any restaurants and have never worked in the industry. I do however dine out a lot and find the food service business very interesting.I just found this book to be decent. It may be helpful to the prospective restaurateur who does not dine out frequently and knows little about restaurants in general. If you live in a major city with a lot of successful restaurants, if you are pretty analytical, and if you have a good eye for detail, a lot of what this book discusses will just be common sense to you.However, I did find the section on formulas for calculating prices to charge on your menu to be helpful. That's probably the only part of this guide that was news to me.

The only part I found helpful was the psychology and placement of certain high ticket items. If you've been in the FSI for a while it is moderately helpful in writing menus. I think what would be really helpful is to place more emphasis on the actual costing out of menu items and perhaps some ideas on efficiently do this. This is why:If you have your inventory list of all ingredients and their cost you still have to figure out the cost per unit of measure; For dry ingredients you have to use weight but when you actually use most recipes things like flour and sugar are list in cups. So you have to go to the internet or weigh out each dry item to get the average weight per cup, etc. and then enter that into your recipe in order to cost it out correctly. (i.e. how many cups in a 50 pound bag of flour? whole wheat? 25 pound box of walnuts? sugar? chocolate chips? you get the idea right?) I know this because I've done it. It's tedious and time consuming to go through recipes to do this.They do however go over how to measure things like produce but in the restaurant business do you really think anyone has time to weigh the product, say a case of romaine, when you recieve it (Does anyone have a scale big enough for this?), weight it again when you're ready to use it (for shrinkage over time), trim it, wash it, weigh it again, and then weigh out portions and the number of portions per case? (There will be more shrinage over time again since you'll probably not use the whole case that day). I think NOT.Maybe I'm wrong but as a chef running a small cafe with limited staff I would not have time to do this.

Excellent book if anyone is very intersted in being involved in any restaraunt establishment.this book has helped me better understand the concepts of menu planning and strategies,I will eventually get all the books related to the Food Service Industry. My Goal is to own and run a Food Service Establishment. Thank You, Bernard Markowskif

I LOVE IT I USE ALL THE TIME. IT IS ONE OF MY COOKING BOOKS WE USE IN CLASS. I HATE EBOOKS I RADER HAVE A HARDCOVER ANY DAY

If you have any experience in food service then this book will be mostly a review of what you already know. A few tidbits of information for experienced operators exist, but likely nothing not available elsewhere for free. The book is obviously almost 20 years old and it shows as it mentions out of date trends, listing in non existent search engines, and how a website is optional (not really anymore).

If you will peruse my other two reviews of guides published by Food Service Professional you will note I am not bashful - when they short change me I tell you straight out!This guide, though, is superior to any other guide I have read - thorough, detailed, and helpful without wasting reams of paper to appear more complete. This is a must-read for anybody wanting to set their menu prices at optimum profitability.I especially appreciated the various formulas, explanations and examples they provided so I could get my head around the topic (as the Brits are fond of saying) and not feel that some rule of thumb (such as, three times the ingredient cost) is the only way to price. Rules of thumb can get you in trouble and are only a guide based on 'all other things being equal.' That explains why I liked their information throughout chapter 5. This one chapter would probably be worth a full semester in college!To be sure, the principles elucidated in chapter five can be applied to any business economics class and such students would gain immeasurable benefit.Be watching for LJ's Breaking Free$ to learn more ways to make money by starting your own business or small farm - Bill Anderson (LJ).